Originally Posted by turbofireball

The old and new are finally together:

Originally Posted by kevinj

Just picked up my kits from the local hobby shop. They ran a special 2 for $50. Gotta love a shop where the manager likes rockets!

kj

Originally Posted by georgegassaway

I've decided for the sake of safety to post this news here. Maybe it won't get deleted?



For those who have the Estes 1/45 Little Joe-II, which is a fantastic kit, there is a plastic glue issue you should be aware of. The corrugated body wrap is formed out of ABS plastic, which is better for that purpose than styrene (Stronger, not as brittle). However, many glues that work with styrene do NOT glue properly to ABS, the parts will stick together…… but not fuse together and can peel off. for example Testor’s plastic cement, red tube, does NOT melt and glue anything to ABS. It “Sticks”, but will pop off easily. And yes I found out the hard way.



So, use a SOLVENT glue that bonds to ABS as well as to Styrene. The one that I finally found that works is Plastruct’s Plastic-Weld (Glass bottle, orange label). It is a low-viscosity (watery) type solvent (melts plastic together) glue (MEK based), that works with ABS, Styrene, Acrylic, and some other plastics. I know this works. If you use anything else, TEST on ABS to see if it melts the plastic (test on a small area on the underside of the ABS corrugated wrap, under where a fin will go. For a liquid solvent glue, brush a little on, and 5 seconds later press your finger into the area. If it feels stick,y it has melted the ABS. If it is not sticky, the glue is no good for it). Please do not ask me if Brand X or Brand Y or Brand Z will work, I’m going with what I have actually used, after having had a horrible result with a glue that was supposed to bond ABS and styrene (Read to the end).

The one CA I’ll recommend is Zap’s Plastic-Stic. Which his a medium CA that is formulated to bond plastics with other things like wood and fiberglass and so forth. I used that on the fins of my Little Joe, after an incident where all 4 fins attached with Testor’s plastic cement (red tube) broke off. In a flight that crashed, all the fins using Plasti-Zap stayed attached to the ABS wrap, though the crash was so severe that a fin came off taking part of the ABS wrap with it.

However, for the lugs, I still recommend Plastruct’s Plastic-Weld to attach them. It will fuse the styrene lugs to the ABS wrap, a stronger molecular bond than Plasti-Zap can give for such a small critically stressed area.

And here is the biggest reason for posting this. I flew my model nearly 2 weeks ago on an E15. The model pitched over hard , got horizontal, and crashed at high speed. After checking photos and a video, it turned out that ignition, the thrust spike caused a lateral force that made the bottom lug pop off. Then shortly after going up a rod about 18 inches, the model pried the upper lug off, and was pitching fast. The lugs had broken off before, having been glued with Testor’s (the model then fell to the ground breaking all of the fins off). to glue the lugs on, I used Plastruct’s “Bondene”, which is supposed to be for ABS and Styrene, implying to me it was even better than Plastic-Weld. But it is not! Do NOT use Bondene for ABS, at least not on this kit (It melts Styrene, does nothing at all to the ABS wrap).

And this is also why I will not recommend anything except what I have personally used and have found to work. Any other glues, which might work, you are on your own. TEST!

- George Gassaway