Hone repair with pics

All of us that pick am old hone now and then find flaws that we wish we could fix or at least strengthen and shore up. I ran into a product lately that I thought might be of interest here. It is an acrylic that remains liquid until you hit it with a UV light. The light hardens it in seconds to a clear hard plastic. There are several brands. This is just the one I happened to pick up. I have a nice coticule that had a small chip and a gap where is was glued to the BBW. I dripped the plastic into the gap and hit it with the light and could build it up to get the corner back in good shape.

That's pretty sweet Brian! That would be handy to have around. Nice repair.

I am really liking it for its speed and the fact that it does nothing until you hit it with the light. If you get it where you don't want it you can just wipe it off. Stays completely liquid till you hit it with the light and then pow. In just a few seconds it is hard plastic.

Some optical cements work the same way - interesting stuff. I've made 'fills' like that with epoxy, because it's what I had around.
This glue might interest me for cracks in the top.. if it's soft enough.

Very limited experience with this stuff yet Gamma, but it has some flexibility and is not brittle. It sands smooth and testing it before I used it I could just barely dent it with a fingernail. I have used it to fill an over-sized hole in a blade and it worked well for that too. Cleaned and made sure the hole was 100% oil free, then filled the hole, hit it with the light and then drilled to match the pin diameter. Drilled without cracking.

Very nice. That would be useful for lots of things.
I'll see if I can find some locally

This would be awesome to stabilise scaling material with. I have some britle horn that would be a perfect candidate for this.

Tried it for finishing wood scales yet?

Slash McCoy said:

Tried it for finishing wood scales yet?

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Not yet, but it did immediately come to mind the first time I used it. It will sand and polish like all acrylics. It comes out of the tube about syrup consistency and stays that way until you hit it with the light or walk outside so it is important to remember that daylight has enough UV in it to harden it. Until you hit it with the light you can wipe it off or re-position parts. You can't expect to use it like a glue between two opaque parts. Anywhere the light won't reach it won't harden. It will harden under water so long as it is clear enough to shine the light through. One thing worth mentioning is it doesn't move or change color or anything when it hardens. The first time I hit it with the light I thought it hadn't worked because there is no visible change. It just goes from liquid to solid with no expansion or shrinkage.

It just goes from liquid to solid with no expansion or shrinkage.

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Now that does make it cool... I'll have to get some to experiment with.

Brian, if you don't mind, what are the adhesive properties? Can you glue parts together, or is it just a filler?

Thanks!

alpster said:

Brian, if you don't mind, what are the adhesive properties? Can you glue parts together, or is it just a filler?

Thanks!

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That very much depends on the material it is applied to. A drop on a smooth plastic or steel can be scraped off pretty easily. It wants to have nooks and crannies to hold on to. It has good compression strength and good tensile strength, but its adhesive strength seems to be totally dependent on giving it a rough surface to grab on to. This short video shows how strong it can hold, but you will note right away that this plays to the materials strengths. Grooves to hold on to and no dependence to adhere to a smooth surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqflCZF0e0E

I wonder if mixing pigments into it would prevent it from curing properly...?

Slash McCoy said:

I wonder if mixing pigments into it would prevent it from curing properly...?

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You have me in an area that I have zero real world experience with, but I did a ton of reading and YouTube watching before I purchased and my reading says that yes you can add pigments so long as you leave the material translucent. It all comes down to what will UV light penetrate.

I pulled the trigger on a starter kit and 10 refill cartridges. I hope I still have some ebony somewhere...

Looking forward to your opinion on this material.

Interesting thread, thanks for posting! I've known about this for some time, dentists use a UV curing cement too, but I think this thread is going to make me try it.

Cheers, Steve

Thank you! At the very least it has made its way onto the list of things I keep around the house. I keep CA glue, both the thick and the thin formulations. I always have two part epoxy around because I haven't found anything that beats it for pure shock resistant adhesive strength over a wide range of materials. Wood glue of course because for wood it hasn't been beaten yet. I guess I have to add Gorilla glue to that list too because of the way it actually expands as it dries. For me that puts this UV hardening acrylic into pretty special territory.

Did a little research - can't find a real hardness rating for this product though.
Seems that for cracks that go deep, and are narrow, this woudn't be the best option, curing it would be next to impossible.
But I'm seeing other possibilities.
Another thing - you can find 50 ml bottles of something that is either identical or very similar for 8.00 shipped.

Gamma said:

Did a little research - can't find a real hardness rating for this product though.
Seems that for cracks that go deep, and are narrow, this woudn't be the best option, curing it would be next to impossible.
But I'm seeing other possibilities.
Another thing - you can find 50 ml bottles of something that is either identical or very similar for 8.00 shipped.

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Hmmmm... do tell...