Thanks, Neevel!

[Purple Fencer]

Dave;

Thanks for the long-ago suggestion of an accelerant for the superglue. I finally bought some today and I was able to wire 7 epees in one night! Before it would've been 2, maybe 3.

The bottle came with a little aerosol sprayer, but it didn;t work. I ended up dipping a q-tip int the bottle, then running it down over the glued wire. Worked like a charm, and I didn't spray accelerant all over the place!

One thing, tho...the sales guy told me to keep the accelerant as far away from the glue tube as possible, since the fumes alone would start the curing process!

[oiuyt]

Sam-
A couple notes about the accelerant....
1) Do you really need it? The CA style glues are so fast anyway that for blade wiring it shouldn't even be an issue.

okay, now on to the real notes....

We used Zap glue (a CA glue) and for some things Zip-Kicker (the equivalent accelerant) in my high school science club for some building projects. Okay, we built a LOT of things and got a lot of experience in when to use one and when to use both. using the accelerant will basically immediately fix the glue. The problem is that the fixed glue is heavier (not a problem with blades, it is when you're building balsa bridges) and harder/more brittle (this WOULD be a problem for blades).

You tend to get more of the glue attached if you accelerate (less evaporates into the air) but it's harder, and we found more brittle.

When the brittleness wasn't an issue we frequently would Kick our glueing jobs, but anywhere that either weight or flexibility might be needed we'd wait the 30 seconds for drying and 5 minutes for setting or whatever it needs. This just isn't much time when it comes to wiring blades. By the time you've got the next blade set up and ready to wire your first will have already finished even without accelerant. I don't know that it would cause problems in blades, but it's not worth it really in any case.

Experiement a bit, but watch for loss of flexibility (not in the blade obviously, but see whether wires pop out more often with accelerated wiring jobs than w/o). Hope this helps and that you don't end up having problems.

-B

[neevel]

Ron Herman once commented: "only Americans would think of using accelerant on fast-curing glue"

All of oiuyt's comments are germane. I mainly use accelerants for between-bout fixes of wires popping out, or when someone brings me a new blade and wire and needs a weapon ready for their DE in ten minutes. Otherwise, Zap CA or similar thin glues cure so quickly that there's not too much point. With 3-4 bending jigs, I'd have little difficulty doing 7 blades with Zap CA in 30 minutes or so.

-Dave

[Purple Fencer]

Well...most of the time I'm either wiring at an event, or I've got a ton of wiring before a NAC...so yeah, the kicker's a big help!

I'll watch out for the brittleness, though. i WAS having wire popping problems recently, and I think it was because the blades went into use before the glue had truly cured.