Tamiya and Malifaux

[TheJoyInGaming]

Help wyrdos! Bad things may have happened...

I’ve been trying my hand at using tamiya extra thin plastic cement and may have messed up (meaning i did)

I was putting together one of the mourners and applied a dot of tamiya’s to the seam where her head and neck meet and to make a long story short i moved the head and it didn’t bond properly. I have tried rebonding but it is not getting any stronger and there is still movement in the neck. I have even seperated them slightly to apply the cement more directly which seems to have helped somewhat but i can tell it has not bonded like it should because there is still slight movement there. Any advice?

[solkan]

Looking that product up, I see it described as a plastic solvent.

In order to get a decent bond between the two parts, you're going to need to separate them, apply the cement, and then put them back together.  Otherwise you're just going to keep getting a little bit of softening and slight bonding between wherever the solvent can reach.

If that stuff is anything like Plastruct, the thing to keep in mind is that if it evaporates, dries out, or otherwise doesn't bond when you try it the first time because something got nudged, you're going to be best off separating the pieces, letting everything dry/cure and then try again.  Because the whole point is that the solvent softens the plastic, then you press the pieces together and the plastic sticks together.  If you're just separating the pieces a little bit and trying to get the solvent in there, that's probably not getting much contact.

 

[Raimu]

First of all extra thin is not your ordinary cement - it is designed for capillary effect glueing when you dry fit two parts and then put glue into the seam. You can use it as ordinary cement (as do I), but 1) you do have to put a lot of it on parts before connecting as it evaporates very fast and 2) don't touch it for longer time as usuall, it takes longer time to cure.

[TheJoyInGaming]

Thank you for the replies!

I have checked it since and the bond appears to be much stronger now. I am thinking that a combination of cluminess, impatience, and finger girth contributed to the error and my tries at rebonding increased the curing time.

if i may ask another question though, how would you suggest bonding the smallest pieces in the future?

[solkan]

Forceps and there are these "stick Q-tip" type things that you can find in jewelry or crafting sections.

Honestly, there have been some small parts that I've just left on the sprue (or a long segment of the runner, at least) and glued stuff to it, instead of trying to take the piece off and put it on the model in progress.

 

[TheJoyInGaming]

Thanks again for the advice!