Hello all, I am in the process of building my new plastic Stegadon and I glued on one of the heads and now I decided that I would rather have the other one attached but I cant get the head to break off of the rest of the model. Does anyone have any good tips on how to undo superglue?
Why did you use superglue on a plastic model? Anyways I had cold one head at a wrong angle when glued on and I just removed the whole head by cutting it up in pieces...
As suppe said, at this point the only thing you can do is carefully cut it off. With METAL MODELS (don't use with plastic models for chrissakes!) thinner gets the job done.
Paint thinner or nail polish remover works really well at removing super glue, but because it's a mild acid you might corrode your plastic model as well. I'd advise giving up the head and chopping it off peice by peice.
Haha! Well if thinner will do it then I'd not suggest nail polish remover...although anything is worth a try once.
I will be sure to try the nail polish remover and if that doesn't work I will go ahead and try freezing it. Thanks for your advice!
Don't use nail polish remover on plastic.... It will go all frosty and lumpy if it doesn't warp completely. With any solvent at all, I strongly recommend testing them in a spare bit of sprue before touching a model with it. Plastics can be quite reactive to organic chemicals.. And I should know. Freezing is a good idea. In general, superglue is very hard to remove from plastics once they are fixed. Sacrificing the head and carving it off is probably going to end up the best way. You are lucky because the steg has quite thick plastic it might be a lot easier to snap than many smaller models. You should at least avoid the problem of the plastic bending rather than snapping.
oh okay. I wont use nail polish remover then. The stegadon is in the freezer at the moment. Does anyone know if vinegar works as a solvent for superglue? I have heard that it does but i have no idea if it will actually work.
And DO make it wet first. I'm talking H2O here. To put it straight I don't use plastic glue anymore. Mainly because having super glue at hand is more versatile and because once the plastic glue on the plastic model is set there is no going back. Cheers!
Hmm acetic acid on cyanoacrylate... I think it could work, and shouldn't do any harm, might be worth watering it down a bit just in case anyway.