I heard this question asked by the local morning radio show crew and I thought it would be a funny topic for the forum.
Personally, I have only had my fingers stuck together on a few occasions.
Last year I was building a walthers jordan ballast spreader (in a landfill now), and I used CA. Being the kid with 143 I.Q. that I have I stupidly looked into the nozzle when it was clogged. Can anyone guess what happened next[?][B)]
I wish I had one. The only thing that happens between me and superglue is that it usually doesn’t bond with what I need it to bond to, and then the whole tube sets up before I get to use it again! Every time.
Mark C.
While building a resin boxcar, one of our cats hopped up onto my workbench and knocked a Kadee truck into a juice jar cap full of superglue. Not only did it ruin the truck, but it splashed CA onto the body of the car AFTER it had been painted, so I had to strip the whole thing, sand off the CA splatters, reglue stuff that had come off during the stripping, and basically rebuild the whole darned car.
Oh, and I had to chase the cat around with a pair of scissors, to try to cut off the hair on his paw that he managed to superglue together.
I now add a whole lot less CA to bottle caps when I’m modeling…
No horror story but I did learn to not impulsively try to clean it off my fingers with a paper towel.
Wayne
Superglue doesnt work. It only ever sticks to what you dont want to stick together and doesnt glue the stuff together.
I eye the CA as a potentially expensive trip to the ER waiting to happen.
I also keep a bottle of “Debonder” handy. I can attempt to break a forming bond such as skin to skin or similar. It has saved me several times.
I have scared myself after seeing some crazy “DONT LET THAT &^%$ GLUE GET THERE!!!” situations. I resorted to testors glue which needs a day to dry in some cases after playing cat and mouse with that shaky drop of CA threating to get into something important except the parts that need to be secured.
1st Commandment shall state:
Thou shalt not SQUEEZE the CA bottle out of impatience
After gluing myself to several car kits (and a locomotive boiler front), I finally discovered the slow-setting kind that’s thicker and more like Epoxy. Now I’m a happy camper, except like MuddyCreek, I still occasionally have a brain fart and reach for a paper towel.
Tom
Who here has seen the movie “American Pie 2”? The scene where Jim is alone in his room watching his video. And he accidentally glues his hand to his…himself. [:-^] Now that was a superglue disaster!
I’ve never had anything spectacular happen with CA and me. Just got some on my hands a few times. I never got it in the eye, like some of you.
One time, (without knowing it) I got a small amount of CA on the fingernail of my index finger. Shortly later, the bottom of my middle finger came into contact with that fingernail and the two were joined.
My wife thought it was pretty funny (can’t really blame her). I used her finger nail polish remover to loosen them. Didn’t work. I then turned to my trusted X-Acto knife with a chisel blade and carefully cut them apart… no easy task considering I was cutting with my left hand, and I’m right-handed. While dangerous and nothing I’d recommend to you coffee drinkers (oh wait, that’s me), it worked.
It was the first and only time that a chisel-bladded X-Acto knife has come into contact with my body in a positive manner. Usually, I’m trying to remove some details from a locomotive pilot when a thought pops into my head… “I shouldn’t be cutting towards that finger.” Then WHAM… the blade releases from the plastic and I have a bloody finger in my mouth as I run for a band aid.
Start a thread about the dumbest things you’ve ever done with a hobby knife and I’ll tell you how I did that exact thing to two different fingers within five minutes of each other. A really quick learner, that Bergie guy. I remember having to explain to friends later that evening why I had a band aid on my index AND middle finger. [:o)]
Ok, I’ll bring us back to CA… the best part about it is that you can use it to seal bad cuts like a hobby knife cut.
Bergie
That’s exactly why it was developed in the first place - quick way to seal battlefield wounds. And of course why it excels at sticking skin to skin.
Nail polish remover is a good thought - to bad with all the overblown safety nuts today, nail polish remover no longer contains acetone, which is what would debond the CA.
–Randy
“No longer contains Acetone…” wanna bet?
I got some on the shelf that has it.
Just finished installing a Central Valley Truss bridge when I notice one of the girders was loose. I first tried reg Testors glue, but there was enough pressure that it pulled apart even after waiting awhile. Ah, ha! Time for CA. That wil fix this blankety thing.
Well, I finally maneuvered the nozzle in place and held the girder in place with my fingers on the bottom side. I let it have it. After waiting a few sec, I let go…well, tried to let go. Yes, I was permanently welded to the bridge, by myself, and far away from any tools. I finally was able to twist my thumb free (leaving some bark behind), but my forefinger was still stuck. I ended up twisting that same girder completely out and then used finger nail polish remover to get it free. Only problem left was getting it out from underneath my fingernails which were stuck to the skin.
REX
Oughta be a corollary of Murphy’s Law somewhere here. How about: “CA will always bond those materials which ought never to be bonded to each other and will occasionally bond dissimilar materials when and where desired.” ?
Actually, I’ve had fairly positive experiences with CA. Maybe my secret is that I never use it unless all else has already failed.[:D]
Chuck
Back when I used Goober-glue, I was building a girder system to hold some steam lines above the tracks. i gingerly applied just the right amount to girder after girder, and somewhere in the process I got some on my left hand. I, with my commando like reflexes, immediately jerked my hand away, in the process loosing one of the girders. Looked everywhere for it, figured it fell into that time-space portal that always seems to open up when I’m working with small parts, so I went happily on my way.
About a week later, I was getting a shirt out of the closet, and saw the BIGGEST creepy crawly on the sleeve, so I (again with those reflexes) heaved it across the room into a pile of supplies, knocking them all choc-a-blok. Let out quite a good Ninja attack scream, but somehow the accoustics of the room twisted it around to sounding like a scared little girl.
When I finally got around to getting ready to squa***he mutant bug, yeah,you know what it was. Separated it from the sleeve with my X-acto. Used it a few days later.
Technology is our friend. Now I use Testors or Faller’s.
Worst CA story? That would probably be when I tried to use it to fill a crack/hole in the top plate of an old Pentax Auto 110 camera I bought. The repair was fine, unfortunately it looks like the superglue fumes did something to the shutter speed settings, with the result that it now doesn’t work properly - as having it re-adjusted would cost more than just buying another one on eBay It’s now in the spares box!
When constructing benchwork one day, someone called my name I looked up in a hurry, not realising where I was, and ended up with a 3 inch cut right across my forehead, defenatly needed some stitching, so they took me to the doctor and guess what he took out of his fridge to stich:
medical grade CA, he just glued the skin together, held it tight for some seconds Voila, head fixed ! and the repair did not leave any scar whatsoever.
lupo,
I guess that would be a kitbashed head?
I love reading the posts here (as well as the “stupidest things you’ve done thread” it makes me feel like I have thousands of blood (or bloodied?) brothers out there!
It’s amazing any of us are still alive!
My disaster was a combination of Woodland Scenics tacky glue and CA. One day, I was using WS tacky glue to place the checker players set on a club layout. This was in the Wintertime, and our clubhouse has no central heating, so I was wearing a heavy flannel shirt. I got all of the figures in place, and suddenly noticed that the hound dog was missing. I searched and searched, but there was no sign of the dog anywhere on the layout. I even got out a floodlight and checked under the layout and in the crack behind the fascia board, but there was no sign of the dog.
About a month later, as I was getting ready to launder the flannel shirt I had been wearing that day, I felt a small lump on one of the sleeves. It was the hound dog. Somehow, in the process of placing figures, my sleeve had rubbed against the dog and the tacky glue stuck it to my shirt better than it sticks to the layout.
On my next trip to the club, I couldn’t get the hound dog to stick with the WS tacky glue, so decided to try a drop of the gelled CA. I forgot that this scene was on 4-inch thick styrofoam that had been painted. I put a drop of CA onto the layout, and gingerly placed the dog into position with a pair of tweezers.
As I was gathering up my tools and congratulating myself for having enough sense to use tweezers instead of gluing my fingers together or to the dog, I noticed that the dog was beginning to sink into a hole as the CA dissolved the styrofoam. I just left it that way, thinking that the CA would quickly set and not cause too much damage.
The next day, the dog was at the bottom of a 1" deep hole and was still sinking. CA doesn’t set up when it’s in contact with styrofoam.
i had several freight cars sitting on their sides on a shelf to await some work. i had placed a bottle of ca also on the shelf with the cars. somehow the ca bottle sprung a leak gluing it and the cars permanantly to the shelf. no the bottle had not fallen over. it was still upright but empty.