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I am currently working on Ferrus Manus at the moment and I am going to need to start gluing the tiny chains and tubes to the model. Is there any trick to get enough glue to have the piece set firmly but not overglue the connection point?

Tamiya Extra Thin, tweezers, and patience.

I thought Tamiya Extra Thin was a poly cement, not superglue? Edit: Checked, yes it's a poly cement. Don't try to use it on resin, it won't work.

I often put a little puddle of thin superglue (not the gel stuff) on a piece of plastic, gently dip the end of the part I'm gluing in, then touch it off onto a piece of absobent paper to wick off the excess glue (cigarette rolling paper works quite well) before holding it in place.

A CA accelerator (zip kicker etc) can help immensely - apply that to where the part will go just before doing the above.

winterdyne wrote:
I thought Tamiya Extra Thin was a poly cement, not superglue? Edit: Checked, yes it's a poly cement. Don't try to use it on resin, it won't work.

I often put a little puddle of thin superglue (not the gel stuff) on a piece of plastic, gently dip the end of the part I'm gluing in, then touch it off onto a piece of absobent paper to wick off the excess glue (cigarette rolling paper works quite well) before holding it in place.

A CA accelerator (zip kicker etc) can help immensely - apply that to where the part will go just before doing the above.

Ahh, didn't realize it was resin. Good catch. Use this technique with the CA accelerator. It works really well. It does make bonds more brittle so use it on small parts only.

For super tiny parts I avoid holding them with my giant clumsy fingers while trying to glue them. Instead I put a ball of blutack on the end of a toothpick (or piece of sprue or whatever), stick the fiddly bit to the blutack with the contact point exposed. The trick is to just gently press it on to the blutack, you only just want it to pick up the part so it doesn't fall off.

Then I apply superglue to the contact point, sometimes I sharpen a piece of sprue to a point and apply superglue to it which I then transfer to the part, or do what winter said and put some on a throwaway piece and dip the part in to it. You want to make sure you don't accidentally glue the blutack to the part (the same way you don't want to accidentally glue your finger to a part if you were holding it with your fingers!).

Then just hold the part in place for a few seconds, long enough for the superglue to dry sufficiently that you can pull the toothpick away without breaking the join. For superduper fiddly stuff, like say a pitot tube or aerial on a small scale aircraft, before applying any glue I figure out a way of propping the model, fiddly part and blutacked toothpick in place without me holding any of it so I can apply the glue and just leave it for a few hours before trying to remove the toothpick.