I've never had much use for Super Glue before. Actually, that's probably not quite true. More than likely I've had plenty of uses for it, but I either didn't care enough to use it or had my dad around to use it for me. Today, however, I discovered to my dismay that one of the arms of my sunglasses had snapped off (side-note: do you call those things arms? I can't think of another term, so I'll stick with that one for now). They were a cheap pair from Target, and my first thought was to simply replace them with another cheap pair. However, after making a trip there, I couldn't find a pair that I really liked for a reasonable price, so I decided that I'd try to fix them with Super Glue. When I got home, I laid down some spare cardboard on the floor to try and minimize any mess I might make, gathered the glue, sunglasses, and a broken bowl (it came broken in the set, and I thought I'd try to fix it someday), and got to work. I tackled the sunglasses first, and found that it was slightly harder to get the pieces to stay together than I thought. However, after several tries, a few drips on the cardboard, and a slight coating on a couple fingers, I succeeded in repairing the glasses! Hopefully they'll hold together until I find another pair I like. The bowl was harder to put together, and it certainly won't pass for new again or win any beauty prizes, but it should still be useful as some sort of decoration or something...the remaining cracks, chips, gaps, and random dots and streaks of glue mean it's probably never going to be used for food. :) I'm also pleased to report that I didn't glue any fingers together, or any fingers to the sunglasses or bowl or cardboard, or anything else that I didn't purposely glue together. My fingers didn't escape unscathed though...still working on getting the last bits of glue off them. :) Below are a couple pictures I took to commemorate my first (and successful) encounter with Super Glue.
The set-up and the finished repairs! You can sort of see the hole in the side of the bowl...couldn't get that piece to fit in there.
One of the drops of glue...when it was drying out it started forming crystals that pointed up! Sorry, science nerd moment over.
I've found that the best way to get rid of glue is to rub your fingers together while the glue is still damp. The glue peels off as it sticks to itself. On an unrelated note, I was asked to do research with a Chemistry Professor at UTC starting next fall.
ReplyDeleteLots of soaking in warm soapy water and in some acetone-based nail polish remover seemed to do the trick too. I heard about your research opportunity...congrats! Any idea what your research is about? And which chem prof?
ReplyDeleteDr. Mebane and I will be doing research with Reny Nickel catalysts and 2-propenol.
ReplyDeleteI thought that might be the case. Dr. Zuidema and I did work in the same area. Dr. Mebane often ran samples for us on machines we didn't have at Covenant, and was really helpful...I met him once in passing.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Dr. Mebane is really fun. If you want a real adventure with superglue, you should try gluing yourself onto a chair and try to get off.
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