Noah Archer wrote:Yesterday was the day i constructed my first army. I could not stand the glue, even thought I requested my buddy to leave the back door open. It helped a little, but whenever i put glue on the pieces, the smell was unbearable. How bad are the fumes, and yes, i am not stupid enough to purposefully huff them. Do most of you ventilate your work spaces?
my 2 cents ...
After 3 years of using an acetone based plastic glue (Tamiya Extra Thin Cement) and
CA SuperGlue (Bob Smith Industires Insta Cure+), I developed an allegery to both of them roughly at the same time with couging the next day and runny nose sometimes and the occasional sneezing, flu like symptoms essentially. You can feel the irritation in the lungs. If I don't use them and days pass then the symptons go away. I tried a full face mask 3M 6800, big ventilation fans right next to me with their own floor stands and 3M 6098 filters which are meant to filter out organic acids such as acetone but still somehow the vapors affected me (less than before) if say the mask was not fitted perfectly or I walked past the hobby area without a mask after I had been gluing just before.
So I discovered "LESS" toxic alternatives ... for the plastic glue, I used less toxic "Tamiya Limonene" which is a natural citric acid (orange peel concentrate) which works really well on warhammer grey plastics, it doesn't affect me and only takes 20% longer to melt the plastic compared to acetone glues which kill me.
As a replacement for
CA glue, I used Bob Smith Industries 5 min Quik Cure Epoxy, it's a two part epoxy glue, far less toxic that
CA SuperGlue and the 5 min version can be used on FineCast (not the 15/30 miin versions I think). You have to mix it which is painful but it bonds stronger than superglue, and is liquid enough to say stick magnets in tiny holes on plastic Warhammer miniatures. So epoxy glue is great as a less toxic alternative to
CA Superglue. Also you have to be better organized and fast with epoxy as it has a 5 minute work time and in 15 minutes it gets hard and then in one hour it is fully hardened.