Gluing Styrene

For gluing styrene I used a couple different products. The first is the Testors plastic model glue. This comes in a gel form that has a fairly long drying time. This can be good, especially when you have to put the glue over a large area before putting the parts together. The downside is that the longer drying time requires you to hold the pieces together longer.

https://www.amazon.com/Testor-Corp-3501-Plastic-Model/dp/B00BH0NN1A/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=TES3512A&qid=1611623950&s=home-garden&sr=1-6-catcorr

The second product is the Plastruct Plastic Weld. This comes in a liquid form with a brush for applying it in the cap. This has a much faster drying time then the Testors so you don’t need to hold pieces together as long.

https://www.amazon.com/Plastruct-Plastic-Weld-applicator-Bottle/dp/B00FDFWJD8

The third product is the Flex-I-File Touch-N-Flow system. This is a liquid similar to the Plastruct product, but you apply it with an applicator that is composed of a long glass tube with a metal needle point. Instead of applying the glue to the parts and then putting them together, you hold the parts together dry and then run  the applicator along the seams. The glue will get pulled into the seams and dry very quickly.

 https://www.flex-i-file.com/adhesives.php

Each of these products has pros and cons so I used different ones in different situations. One more tip, for the bottle products I highly recommend making something to hold the bottles so you don’t risk knocking them over. I simply drilled a hole in a scrap piece of wood.

Working with Dowels

There are a couple details on R5 that I made using wooden dowels. When making these parts I needed to drill holes in the center of the ends of dowels. This required a couple special tools that I will talk about here.

The first thing I needed was way to mark the center of a dowel. Here is a store bought centering tool that I got as a hand me down. It has a V-shaped slot on each side that you put the dowel into and then mark along the straight edge. You need to mark at least two lines to get the center, but I always mark a third just to be sure that I didn’t mess up one of the other two lines. You can buy one of these from here, among other places.

Another option is to make your own centering tool. This is made with two pieces of plywood glued together at a right angle and a piece of style cut with a 45 degree angle. For this to work properly you need to be sure the angles are as accurate as possible. Be sure the two pieces of plywood are square to each other, be sure the styrene is exactly 45 degrees. This is used the same way as the store bought one.

 

The second thing I needed was a way to hold the dowel while I was drilling it. To do this I started with a piece of 1”x3” pine and drilled holes for each size dowel I would be drilling. I then cut a slot through the center of the holes with a band saw.

To hold the piece, I put it in the appropriate size hole and then clamped the end of the board which squeeze it tight around the dowel holding it in place. Before drilling the dowel I used the centering tool to mark the center and then used a nail to put a small guide hole at the center.