"Bondic"

[railsquid]

I don't see anyone mentioning this here previously - a while back I saw some Youtube ads for something called "Bondic" which looked very useful for ad-hoc repair of various things, including models. I picked up a set a while back and finally got round to trying it out (see here) and it worked as advertised.

 

It's not glue; basically it's a tube of some sort of liquid plastic or resin or something, which you can mould into shape easily and then harden with the provided UV light (takes about 4 seconds). It can then be filed down if necessary. Very useful for joining together broken stuff. Be aware that as it's not glue, it doesn't work to mate two surfaces together; it's more a way of building up a supporting joint around two broken parts. Which makes it less useful for attaching visible scenic items, but very handing for fixing bits of plastic like tabs etc. which have bent or snapped off.

 

Having said that, it is also possible to use it to sculpt ad-hoc shapes, here someone has used it to make rounder-looking tail lamps on a DD51:

 

 

I imagine it would also come in handy for joining parts of building kits etc. together. And for general non-model railway purposes as well.

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Squid,

 

thanks, that should go on the glue topic, I’ll add and link this post in.

 

 

bondic is a basic UV curing acrylic resin. Very similar resin based 3D printing. Been around as dental glues for a long time and I guess when you could get cheap uv leds someone thought hey package resin with a little led thumb cell uv light! Only rub is you need to get light to the resin to cure, so like you said mainly for bonds on the surface or to fill in cracks and such small parts like gluing a handrail on will work if your lamp is bright enough as the uv can penetrate a bit into the plastic. 
 

works better if you get a more powerful uv flash light. I’ve been tempted to try one of the more powerful dental uv during lights. They come up under $20 on ebay but I’ve not used the uv resin much and usually I just grab plastic putty to fill and build up, but it does take time to dry.

 

it also like many glues can go off on you in the tube. I had some nicer stuff (it’s made for fly lure tying) that died in a year or so after a couple of uses. Thus usually with all glues I never buy the large size bottles of glue even though I use a fair amount! I get tempted as cheaper buying big but not if 2/3 the bottle goes off!

 

jeff