In this video, see . . .

• A range of different types of cyanoacrylate instant glues
• How glue accelerator can make instant glue more instant
• Thick viscosity instant glue and how it’s great for tough repairs
• Two tricky, real-world repairs completed with instant glue

Cyanoacrylate instant glue is pretty amazing stuff, as you’ll see in the video above . . . 

A while back my saw chain sharpener rolled the wrong way as it lay on the workbench and the handle broke off. I should have been more careful, but mistakes do happen. The handle was plastic, with a bolt inside that tightened into the white metal casting of the main body of the machine. This is not an easy part to replace. How on earth can I fix that? With only the slightest thickness of white metal to glue to, there’s not much surface area. Epoxy? No, that’s probably not going to work. Then I remembered the cyanoacrylate instant glue I got a while back.

The stuff I have is from a company called Starbond. I’d never heard of them before until about eight months ago. Their claim to fame is that they sell the freshest cyanoacrylate instant adhesives around. Now, freshness is important because cyanoacrylate does have a fairly short shelf life. I mean it can last for years, but it’s not going to last forever.

So I gave this product a whirl on my broken sharpener, but not just the glue on its own. I needed an adhesive that was fairly instant. And while this stuff is called an instant adhesive, you’d think it would be instant. But left on its own, it’s not entirely instant. No instant glues are. It can take 5 or 10 minutes for thick cyanoacryate to harden. And that’s a long time when you’re holding a part that needs to be aligned just so. That’s why I used some of the Starbond accelerator. It’s a spray and it causes cyanoacrylate glues to truly harden more or less instantly. It’s got acetone in it. You can smell it. There’s other things in it, too, I’m sure, but it evaporates away, so it doesn’t really affect things. I use this medium viscosity Starbond on one side of the repair, then I sprayed some of the accelerator onto the other side. In a couple of seconds the joint was strong. Wasn’t quite as strong as I wanted, so I added more glue followed by more accelerator, several times. The result is an excellent repair that has stood up to regular use just fine. I’ve used cyanoacrylate instant glues ever since I was a teenager, so I’m well familiar with them. But what I’m really am impressed with here is the different varieties in the Starbond line.

I don’t know about you, but when I manage to fix things really well, I’m often glad the trouble happened in the first place. It just feels so good to make something right again, doesn’t it? And in this case the whole repair took less than 10 minutes.

Do you have an exterior glue job to tackle? Click here for a detailed lesson on the different glues suitable for the outdoors.