TE Armor Glue?

[Joe Campbell]

Building a set of TE armor and wondering about glue. It's styrene, right? MEK? Model cement? Plio-Bond? Thoughts?

 

[Pappy]

White E6000

 

[Darkturbo04]

actually its E6000. widely available at most hardware and craft stores. Plus its now available from TK-4510.

TK-4510 ::E-6000 FOR STORMTROOPER ARMOR ASSEMBLY::

 

[TK1536]

E6000 will do.
But I'd prefer Devcon Plastic Welder... problem is, the only place that carried it was Wal-Mart and they stopped. It's like liquid gold. A great, all purpose epoxy for working with plastic armor.

 

[E Williams]

Well that explains why I can't find the Plastic Welder anymore... I looked all over the place last month- It had been a while since I bought any and I couldn't remember what store had it...

 

[bak9799]

Try hobby shops, my local place carries about 4 types of Plasti-weld

 

[SpyderDan]

+1 for Devcon Plastic Welder. That's what I used on my TE set. Walmart isn't carrying it anymore?

 

[Pappy]

actually its E6000

Uh oh my bad! sorry Joe!:$ edited

E6000 will do.
But I'd prefer Devcon Plastic Welder... problem is, the only place that carried it was Wal-Mart and they stopped. It's like liquid gold. A great, all purpose epoxy for working with plastic armor.

I am using Devcon too on my ABS AP armor parts,it works very very well holding everything together,even i dont had any doubt if i only glue it on the front side,it would just as good with both sides glued.
The only place available for Devcon here(AFAIK) is ACE Hardware,maybe its still available on your local ACEs?

Joe,its Just for consideration.
The originals was assumed using some kind of white adhesive(now we know better that it is). So i bought the off-white Devcons for my armor back then,but after a month it yellowed badly. White E6000s proved otherwise.:thumbsup

Devcon(buy the clear ones): More strength,clean looking(for stormtroopers)
E6000(White ones): Accuracy 'look',flexibility(AFAIK)

 

[sskunky]

what you can do is mix shavings of the plastic you are gluing into a plastic weld or poly weld creating a white paste the same as the plastic you are sticking together. that way the glue always looks and stays the same as the armour. It's like an invisible weld.....

 

[mdb]

Can go even cheaper than that, those welders are pretty much just acetone. Acetone and styrene shavings make a chewing gum type of glue that you can work by hand into the back of seams etc. In my avatar the black and gold collar is a strip of styrene covered in foam anf the gold tabs are extensions of the styrene with decorations made from this acetone and styrene weld and strips of styrene.

The big down side is it is inflexible. Fine for lots of things not so fine for others.

 

[Amish Trooper]

insta-cure is real nice.

 

[Joe Campbell]

Thanks, guys....

I've ended up using a variety of stuff, including the Devcon Welder.

It's absolutely been a learning experience - When working on the thighs, I didn't overlap the pieces, and trimmed and glued them edge to edge with a seam running down the middle. I didn't want the front strip to be "load bearing" so I also glued a styrene strip down the inside. The first two attempts look bad - the glue is yellowish and not very smooth. (Luckily it's on the inside of the thighs!) I got better, though, and switched to to Loctite's clear plastic epoxy. Things look better. The strips moving down the front look really nice, and the forearms (with overlap) look good as well.
Surprisingly, the shoulder straps on the chest were a *****, and, even after masking, required some cleanup.

Moving onto the shins, and attempting to decide how to handle the backs.

Also - I realize that the ANH armor wasn't "highly finished", but I did want to sand and putty the seams at the bottom of the thighs. Used milliput, and it just doesn't wanna dry. I scraped and remixed another batch, and I KNOW I used the correct ratio, but still having issues. Any thoughts?

BTW, I'm an artist, a craftsman, and a bit of a perfectionist. Thought this would be easy, but it's kicking my ass. Props to you costumers and armor builders!

 

[SpyderDan]

Also - I realize that the ANH armor wasn't "highly finished", but I did want to sand and putty the seams at the bottom of the thighs. Used milliput, and it just doesn't wanna dry. I scraped and remixed another batch, and I KNOW I used the correct ratio, but still having issues. Any thoughts?

I did the same thing on my ESB TE set, with a few coats of paint on top (layered colors, so I could lightly sand in subtle weathering). I couldn't find any milliput at the time, and I ended up using some similar stuff at Home Depot. Don't remember the brand name, but it was gray in color, and very similar to the thicker milliput flavor, and worked out great. I've had similar issues with the super-fine white milliput not wanting to set up in the past. Is that what you are using?

A weird issue I encountered when doing this was some strange sort of static charge (or at least what seemed like static) on the parts after putty and sanding, which caused problems with the paint. I had to strip the parts I did this too and paint them over. Other parts without putty and sanding were fine.

 

[sskunky]

I've had the same issue with the white super fine milliput, It never set hard. Never had the same issue with the standard green however........That sets as hard as stone

 

[Joe Campbell]

Yes - Superfine.

Must be an issue - Not glad to hear that you guys had problems, but happy that I wasn't doing something wrong.