: Heh, heh, heh,,,that must have gotten Kurt's attention.

Yeah well, I finally caught it on the fifth or sixth pass... heheheh...:D

Lessee, CA glue... Yep, it's super glue I'm talkin' about. Jet, Hot Stuff, Zap... all the same stuff. It comes in three distinct flavors: thin, medium, and thick viscosity (as in, Insta-Zap, Zap, and Zap-A-Gap). There is also an accelerator available (as in, Zip Kicker) for speeding up the already really fast process.

I learned about CA first as a modeler building R/C sailplanes, sailboats, and rubber-powered free flight and indoor airplanes.

http://members.aol.com/pogo9959/

Later on I was pleased to be reunited with it in a commercial cabinet shop, where it is routinely used to correct ohshits, oopsies, uhohs, and various other small goof-ups (can you say "tear-out"???). Also used in the restoration and repair of furniture. Wonderfully handy to have around the ol' woodworking shop, yup, yup, yup.

In the shade-tree manufacture of kayaks, it does exactly what epoxy does, only cures in seconds intead of days. But it helps to unnerstand it thoroughly; while it isn't nearly as good as epoxy in some (read: thick) applications, it actually surpasses it in others (skinny ones). A good example is when I installed those copper pipe liners in the stem and stern grab-handle holes on my MC13s. The incredible capillary action of the thin CA allowed it to dash freely and eagerly into the tiniest cracks, unimpeachably and forever waterproofing between the copper pipe pieces and the holes they were driven into. I could never have been so confident with epoxy -- it's simply too thick to do anything more than seal around the outside edges.

I was also able to install the edge banding on the hatch lids using medium CA glue and accelerator spray, and be finishing them out less than an hour later. Why, I even glued the scarf joints on the hull panels for both my Cormorants using medium CA glue, and had the hulls fully stitched together the same day I began lofting them.

Thin CA is superbly useful for sealing bare wood in small doses, as in, waterproofing holes or slots made in hull or deck. When installing deck rigging, for instance, I can create my hole or slot, seal it with thin CA, install my rigging and then go paddling immediately. Beats the hell out of waiting an entire day for that little bitty SOB to fully cure. Thin or medium CA also works very nicely to keep bungee cord ends from fraying.

The proper use of thick CA is, in my opinion, rather an art form, and almost invariably requires the use of accelerator. Unless you fully understand the properties of this crap, I advise avoiding it like the plague. It's an incredibly tempting product to use improperly.

CA great stuff, but again, it really helps to get to know it well before trusting your life to it. It's stronger than anything in certain situations, but fairly wimpy in others. In short, it doesn't particularly like much in the way of gaps. The tighter the joint, the happier it is.

And if you mistake the CA bottle for Visene and pout it in your eyeball, don't panic. You'll be fine in three or four days. In fact, I understand some medicos are using CAs to treat open wounds. Coooool!

Get it at hobby shops or specialty woodworking supply stores.

Cheers, Kurt