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Recently I took apart a plastic model I didn't quite like the pose of, which was glued using Testors plastic glue (which, incidentally, I bought just a few months ago). Normally, you have to basically *snap* it because that glue fuses the parts together, but this time everything (literally everything) slooowly pulled apart, even parts that were glued days before. While I'm more than happy to be able to more or less safely dislodge a Chaos marine's head out of it's torso and the torso from the hips/legs, it's not particularly natural. I'd like to know it's truly built and not perpetually setting before I eventually go and paint it.

Does this mean the glue "expired"? (the feet are solidly connected to the base/face, so I'd think "no")
Does heat/humidity cause this? (it is summer, after all)
Is the model itself at fault? Too wild of a pose (as if)? Does it need to be cleaned? (oil from fingers, leftover bits of tack from testing poses, plain old dirt...)


Thanks

The 'glue' could be old (too much solvent has evaporated?)

Which particular testors plastic glue - like several other makers of the stuff, it comes in different types (liquid of varying thickness to gunge-in-a-tube)?

I didn't think plastic glue really got too old, I used a pot of Testors plastic cement for over 10 years and it worked as well at the end as it did at the start. Maybe if it was left open and the solvent could cook off.

That sounds rather.. strange to me. For plastic glue to act in that way. The only two things that i can really think of is as has been said the solvent evaporated from the mixture, or, what im thinking may be more likely, it was a bad batch.

I'm really stuck for ideas, I'm thinking maybe contamination.

You could just try gluing a couple of bits of sprue together and see what happens to decide whether it's the pot itself that's bad or something went wrong with that specific application.

I'm thinking bad batch. I had a bottle of GW's plastic glue where everything I put together with the glue from that bottle comes apart way too easy. It's easy to tell which models I assembled with that glue; the ones that the heads/arms/guns/whatever pop off if I look at them crosswise. Every bottle of GW plastic glue I've had since has worked just fine, despite conventional Internet wisdom telling me that I'm an idiot for using it. Bad batches happen, so I suspect that is what is going on with the OP's glue.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it sounds like it was working fine up until this specific time (since he said the feet are firmly attached), which makes me think it's not a bad batch. I've not heard of plastic glue just suddenly going bad like that.

Tried out the glue again a couple of times. Re-attached the head and torso and waited a few hours (glue recommends 4), leaving the model in the path of a fan this time -- didn't work; top hemisphere of the legs were gummy (guess they didn't fully set?). Tried again, waited over night -- still not 100% set, could still nudge parts around. Popped it in the freezer for a minute, which seemed to help a bit; could still nudge parts but there was far more resistance. Another night and it appears to be rock solid now.

Also glued other random bits just to see if it was the glue or not. Those stuck together fast, even before the recommended 4 hours were up and out of the range of a fan on a hot, humid summer day. So, uh...

I think I'm going to give the problem model a bath before I finish gluing him, since it seems like maybe something on him is preventing the glue from working properly.

 chromedog wrote:
Which particular testors plastic glue - like several other makers of the stuff, it comes in different types (liquid of varying thickness to gunge-in-a-tube)?

It's the blue "toothpaste tube" -- 3521. IIRC, the card stated "for polystyrene to polystyrene"