A question about glue.

[danbloch]

I have a question about glue. I am building the OcCre Polaris ship, which I chose because I am a complete beginner and it includes a video tutorial. The instructions and video say to use wood glue and for some parts, "Cobblers" or "Contact" glue. All I could find was "Contact Cement" and I don't know if its the same thing. A couple posters here commented that they never use contact glue, (or instant dry glue which the instructions also call for).  So now I am not sure what is the right thing to do. This particular step in the build is for "lining the deck," which involves gluing planks to the deck. I think it has something to do with needing a slow drying glue because it has my paint the whole deck with glue and then wait a bit before applying the planks. My question is, should I follow the instructions and use contact glue or should I just use wood glue all the time? And is my contact cement the same thing? You can see what I am talking about in my screenshot of the video below, which shows them brushing the contact glue. 

 

 Thank you for your help.

Dan

[Jaager]

My personal bias:

Contact cement is really terrible for anything on a ship model.  It tends to oxidize and fail in a decades time line.  You get one shot at placement, no fine adjustment possible.

Duco is not a good choice and fails any serious strength test.

Hide glue I have not tried it, but really old school is hide glue flakes melted in a glue pot.  Messy and time consuming, but it should last a couple hundred years.  I tried Franklin liquid hide glue as a reversible wood to wood bond - it held too strongly for my purposes.  Old Brown Glue is said to be a better choice,  but this type is probably too aqueous to play nice with wood.  The pot type has a lot less water.

CA,  some love it and a lot of us moldy figs really hate it and do not touch it.

Epoxy,  the thing to use for metal to wood,  but too messy and ugly for wood to wood.

PVA  - the go to for wood to wood.  The closer the two surfaces, the stronger the bond.  It comes white (dries clear), yellow ( aliphatic ) dries amber and has partial to complete water resistance -depending on the formula used.  It also comes white pH7 - bookbinders strictly for rigging done using natural fibers.   If you coat both surfaces with PVA, let it dry, put the two surfaces together and iron it, the heat allows a bond.  It is a contact cement of sorts. I doubt that the strength is anything like a wet PVA bond.  A proper PVA bond is stronger than the lignin that holds the wood fibers together.

Foaming type would be awful to mess with.

Resorcinol glue is the thing if you are building a full size PT boat,  not worth the trouble on a model.

 

Your bonding - PVA and clamping or weight.  East coast US,  what with the humidity, I prefer Titebond II.

[vaddoc]

I think Jaager's post summarises things well, although I use epoxy a lot for laminating wood. For this task contact cement does not look too appropriate. For wood-wood you can't really go wrong with PVA. Yellow (aliphatic) PVA has very short opening time, white gives you more time to adjust the pieces. However, if you coat a large surface of thin wood with PVA it will absorb the moisture and buckle (does not happen that much with plywood). To avoid this you can wet the opposite surface.

[S.Coleman]

 Tightbond PVA would be your best bet.  You can do little bits at a time instead of painting the whole deck in glue and laying it all down.

[druxey]

Like the other gentlemen say!

[danbloch]

Thank you to everyone who replied. I used my elmers wood glue to line the deck. I am a bit concerned because it kept squishing between the planks and I had to keep wiping it off, but I think once its done I can sand it down a bit and it will hopefully be fine. 

[CD M Santiago]

I had this very concern, also wanted the 'lay and stick' inference from the instructions - me the Amerigo Vespusi; but no contact cement is a no go.  I did find what I hope to be a middle ground - Master Cement on AMZ. I plan to test before committing to the kit, and will fallback on Titebound "Quick&Thick" an item I found in Lowes (?) in my search;  definitely appears to better than various Elmer's series and so far great, but then I came to the decking and froze. I wish they were clearer about this.  Anyway I will report back.

Edited April 28 by CD M Santiago
Typo

[GrandpaPhil]

I use Mont Marte PVA glue for both card and for wood.

 

It works beautifully.

[CD M Santiago]

So I finally got this master cement aka contact cement; I was hoping to use for hull finish planking but unsure if I want to venture. PVA of a better quality I think is the best play, so sticking [no pun] with the girl I came with 😉