Contact cement does not play. Got any glue mishaps?

sitting on the couch at my house, which sat at an elevation of 9,240’. My friend was sitting next to me, getting ready to do some kind of small repair, now long forgotten… that particular detail did not stay in my memory.
What did stay firmly in my memory was that when he pierced the nozzle the bottle squirted nearly all of its contents clear across the room, splattering the tv, dvd player, and coffee table.

It dried clear, so I was able to keep using the tv and dvd player. Still have them (in the guest room)

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Smurf blue as I recall :slightly_smiling_face:

Or maybe “pearlized powder”?

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Yup. I was sneezing blue for a week. :robot:

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Yes, we have discovered on vacation traveling from sea-level to Denver, when you pack, squeeze the bottle and get a slight vacuum to compensate for the pressure differential. Otherwise you get home, unpack - and discover everything is coated in hand lotion.

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handy on flights too!

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Especially!

Every time I fly, I forget to loosen the top of my Camelback drink bottle during takeoff, flip the nozzle up to take a sip, and get squirted in the face.

Every. Single. Time.

:roll_eyes:

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The best glue story I have is actually not mine, but my wife’s. She was a costume designer for a theater, and I made sets and helped with props. We needed to make a Severed Head for Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. We got a Halloween Mask and I made a “cage” out of aluminum to help it keep it’s form, and we stuffed it, put the semi-solid head into a cheese bag and handed it to my wife. She then added “blood” to the neck area but decided that it didn’t look gory enough. So she hung the head up and started to add hot glue to intentionally drip and try and help form stringy, globule, dripping gore.

Well, Gravity works, and when you are holding a hot glue gun vertically and gluing ABOVE your hand, it tends to follow the influence of gravity and land back on your hand… She got some nice blisters from that mistake.

My glue stories aren’t nearly so fun. I’ve made “extra skin” from coating my hand in Elmers Glue in grade school, and I’ve made a mess of my wood glue several times, but I haven’t glued myself to anything yet. I’ve come close several times, but haven’t quite achieved it :wink:

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How is this possible? Unless youre very sneaky and never use glue!

Ive glued myself to many things. I’ve glued myself to myself. One time, I even glued myself to synthetic fabric that reacted with glue and got so hot that it gave me me blisters. That was the worst. Followed closely by the time I tried to open super glue with the teeth.

Now I’m, like, a seasoned glue veteran and mostly only glue the lids on. I think it’s a CA glue scam that they all glue themselves shut and then you have to buy more.

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I haven’t glued myself to anything else that I can recall, at least nothing I couldn’t escape from…but like @erin I frequently glue myself to myself. I even more frequently have multiple fingertips that I can’t feel for a while until glue finally wears itself off. (I ran out of acetone a while back, and keep forgetting to buy more!)

heck no, I bill for using Ethibond all the time (that’s the FDA approved version of CA glue for skin - i.e. doesn’t have toxic surface prep solvents in it)

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Totally agree. That’s why I bought these:

Super Glue 15187 Super Glue, 12-Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LGPD64/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_EQJTBbZ4BYS0B

I lose a lot less glue now.

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OK so contact cement. It grabs IMMEDIATELY when you use it on both surfaces and let it get tacky, but it’s like strong rubber cement so you can boss it around, right?

RIGHT?

Yeah so I went to correct something the next day. “I’ll just lift the end of this leather up and move it a bit and re-glue it, no problem”, he says. WRONG. I tried to peel the leather off the substrate to which it was contact cemented… the leather tore in half before that cement gave up. This stuff is no joke.

Oh and also, I am fairly certain that those fumes would explode and/or kill me. This stuff is not to be trifled with.

The moral of the story: Ventilate and work quickly and make sure you get it right the first time when gluing leather to wood using contact cement.

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My friend Cleo went to the Rhode Island School of Design where, long ago, she took a class from Herman Zapf, German-born designer of (among others) Palatino, Chancery and Zapf Dingbats typefaces. Cleo’s friend Hugh sat nearby, listening to Zapf explain the permutations of positioning headers, footers and page numbers. You could move them here. Or you could move them there. Or you could…

Hugh was bored so he started fidgeting with his jar of rubber cement. He unscrewed the lid, pulled out the brush, stuck his finger in the jar. It felt good: kind of slimy but cool.

Zapf was still moving things around on the page. Cleo watched as Hugh absently stirred his finger in the jar of rubber cement.

Minutes passed. Zapf explained more variations. Hugh kept stirring.

Cleo saw Hugh stop. Then she saw him try to pull his finger free. No go.

After a brief struggle, Hugh was forced to interrupt Prof. Zapf. He gathered his books and papers, concealed his trapped finger as best he could and left the class in search of the school nurse and some solvent.

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Best part of that is having characters named Cleo, Hugh, and Zapf…
Second best part is your telling of the story. You should write, if you don’t already…

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I can’t think of glue without associating a story my mom told us kids when she came back from teaching pre-school one day. She was working with the children on pasting some collages together. The most challenging student in the class started eating the paste. “Tastes good,” he said. Mom chided him and told him not eat the paste. He got up with the bottle and brush and came at mom saying, “'l’ll paste you to the wall!” After that, whenever anyone talked about gluing anything, the stock comment was, “I’ll paste you to the wall!”

My most painful gluing episode was the first time I used a hot glue gun. Made a costume out of a sweat suit and catalpa leaves, going to the school party as Mr. Catalpa, the math teach with a tree for a name. Lots of scars from that gluing session, but the costume was great.

The worst experience I had was using the Great Stuff spray foam insulation. The first time I used it, I didn’t quite read up on best practices. This was pre-youtube shop videos and I didn’t do use groups at that time. So I had regular clothes and no gloves and proceeded to seal up gaps around some window frames and door frames that I had installed and was going to drywall over. I didn’t realize how much it exapanded. I didn’t realize how sticky it was. I didn’t realize that it was one of the hardest things to remove once it got on you. Ruined a good pair of jeans. Had to cut out some of the foam from my hair. My hands were globbed up with goop and I didn’t have any acetone to remove it. I had services in the evening and I was so embarrassed because my hands looked filthy, but I couldn’t get them clean.

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Today I was thankful for exothermic reactions, as I was able to tell something was amiss and keep from gluing my pants to my leg. Also, for acetone.

NOT TODAY, CYANOACRYLATE.

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Cyanoacrylate returns to the shadows, patiently. Soon… yes, soon.

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it’s a constant battle

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