Glue for white metal?

[Stormfather]

I've been using games workshop superglue for most of my plastic on plastic and plastic on metal gluing with no complaints. But it's just no good at holding metal to metal. What glue do you recommend for putting together white metal kits?

 

[kenw]

epoxy is going to work best. Cyanoacrylates will work on very small parts but can be brittle.

 

[jbaakko]

Check out BSI Adhesive's IC-2000, IC-GEL, or Insta-Flex+. They're very resistant to breaking.

 

[UP2CSX]

I'll let Larry (nmaniac) chime in on this. He's probably put more white metal kits together than any guy on earth.

 

[AndrewC]

As mentioned, epoxy is your best bet followed by one of the newer flexible cyanos. The one method that wasn't mentioned is to solder the parts together. You can get specially formulated flux and low melt solder for the job. 70c. It does make the best joint. Especially for large parts like a loco body. If done right you can also solder brass to whitemetal.

The beauty of soldering like that is if you screw up just dump the thing into a pot of hot water and wait until the solder melts way before the white metal does.

One other thing, always give the white metal parts a nice bath and cleaning before you try to glue or solder. There is normally release agent left on the parts. Getting rid of this will improve the bond.

 

[MGWSY]

I have used CA of kits and it works great. One thing is to clean and sand the joint areas very well and you can toss the white metal parts into vinegar overnight to etch the castings a little.

 

[Selector]

I would try soldering first. I would probably want a hot gun with a hefty and fine tip so that I could run the tip quickly down the length to be soldered and expect to get a nice solid bond all the way down.