Acetone as liquid glue?

Hello!

I think that sums it up nicely - cheap things with fancy label on. Since last year I've been using a nice industrial lacquer thinner for glueing styrene parts together. It also works if you want to attach aluminium foil or paper to styrene. It costs like two dollars for a liter (about 2 lbs. of the stuff for the imperial measurment system fans :-). Toluene and Isobutanol are listed as ingradients here. Also works great for cleaning brushes if some hard to remove paint is left on them.

I keep the glue in a small brush bottle that used to hold nail lacquer, so there really isn't a lot of fumes being released when I open the bottle for a few seconds to apply the glue.

So I really don't see paying good money for specialized styrene glues if I can have stuff that works comparably for a lot less.

Good luck with your modelling projects and have a nice day

Paweł

Hi there! I am a chemist to the rescue!

Great question by the way! It's always worth exploring other options to save mula. Methyl Ethyl Ketone is Butanone and Acetone is Propanone...

MEK - Butanone
Acetone - Propanone

Yup, both what we call ketones, or in that chemical family meaning that they behave exactly the same way chemically. The only difference is a an extra carbon group really (CH3) does that make much difference you may ask? 

To a chemist... nope! To a lawyer and all the stuff about who has a patent on what... most likely!

So love the chemistry and use acetone if that works! I haven't used it myself but will give it a go if you are getting good results :-). The thing is, there are so many products for modelling its so confusing, but they are just ordinary cheap things with a fancy label on.

So I've been using pure acetone from the hardware store now for a couple of months, and it seem to work great for certain things. It evaporates quicker than MEK, so it works best when you clamp something together and then apply the acetone. It evaporates too quickly to apply to the part and then position, but i can use another glue for that. This quick setting feature is great because the build time is quicker. 

I've also noticed the fumes aren't as overpowering as MEK which makes it more pleasant to work with while still taking the usual precautions.

Anyway, I can get a big quart can of acetone for about $6, which is much better than a 1 ounce bottle of the hobby stuff for $4-5. Also here in California it's getting harder for me to find MEK being sold, so I had to find a decent alternative.

Thanks for the replies.

We use acetone all the time at work for bonding ABS plastic. Works great!

Well, I use lacquer thinner for glue some 15 years now, and I don't see any disadvantages - it's cheap, easy to buy even outside of big cities and works clean and fast. Now the formulation of this thinner varies from bottle to bottle, but most of them work, and at that price it's worth a risk. When you hit the right stuff, for a few dollars you can buy enough of it to last you for years. And we know acetone and MEK are in the mix, so you might as well use them straight, that works too. So if anybody wants to use the "special" glues, which are essentially the same thing, but overpriced and hard to get - well, be my guest. Good luck with your projects, have a nice day

Pawel

Had a quick look at the properties of Acetone and toxicity looks to be similar to most of the glues we use. I'm not sure how effective it would be to actually melt the styrene to for a true seam in normal household concentrations. I'd have questions about applying it and the viscosity of the fluid itself.

Still if it works for you go for it, for me I'll stick to the normal glues as for experimenting with new things I'll leave that to the brave few

Phil

I wouldn't think there would be much difference in the toxicity of MEK vs Acetone.

Don't know, never used it.  But I would suggest using stuff intended tor the purpose, such as Tenax, Tamiya thin cement, Flex-I-Cement, Testors, etc. etc.