Defiler Friday!

I took some pictures of my Defiler in-progress. Not much to see at this point. I did, however, magnetize the top turret so that it can spin independently of the bottom.

In this picture you can see where I epoxied the magnet. There is another magnet inside the ball joint that normally attaches to the turret. I glued these together at the same time to prevent the magnet from switching polarity while the glue was drying.

I'm almost out of my old tube of Testor's plastic glue, and I'm not sure what I'll do when it runs out. Only hobby shops carry that stuff, and I don't know when I'll get to one. In the meantime, I'll probably use super glue to keep the process going.

I wasn't sure of the safety of super glue on plastic, so I asked some friends of mine. As it turns out, my friends are pretty knowledgeable about glue. I received this educational bit from Aaron:

Generally speaking...

Plastic to Plastic = Testors model glue in a tube (contains Acetone which is why it melts plastic and styrofoam)

Plastic to Metal = Cyano Acrylate (Zap, Super Glue, crazy Glue, GW Super Glue - with the exception of its thickness, it is all the same stuff.)

The above is the rule of thumb.

I have had bonds with Superglue on plastic that were a total joke, while others were unbreakable. There was an occasion a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to remove a gaurdsman's arm that was glued on with CA and the arm broke in half because the bond was so strong. If you want to use CA on plastic, make sure the surfaces are as flush as possible, and use just enough to cover the surface. When it cures it takes on this weird crystalline form, so if you use too much it will compromise the bond. This isn't the case with most other types of glue where the more the better.

Epoxy glue essentially forms plastic around what it is glued to. That is why it bonds so well. It has problems too, but is a adequate solution to getting plastic and metal to stick.

Think of Epoxy as liquid plastic. You want to avoid using Epoxy on anything that has fine detail, or is a cosmetic surface. Epoxy, unless you are very diligent about cleaning it up will make bulbous drips all over which are hard to get rid of. If you don't mind an area of rigidity, it works great for gluing bits of foam rubber, and fabric together.

Testors glue will fail at gluing metal and plastic together. The metal just doesn't want anything to do with Testors.

The only thing that CA glue sucks at is gluing things that are porous. If you were trying to glue a rock or a bit of plaster to a base, the rock would soak up a lot of the CA and there would be very little of a bond to speak of. The more gooey the CA is (Take zap for example) the less that this is an issue. Epoxy is great for porous surfaces.

There is more than you ever wanted to know about glue. I very rarely have models break, they do from time to time, but not often. Pinning always is a good idea, but I understand not doing it that often because it is a hassle. On metal minis it is essential in my opinion unless you are gluing large surfaces.