Tamiya 87038 Extra Thin Cement, 40ml

Product Information

Like its earlier counter part, it stinks to high heaven due to the solvent levels. Prolonged use does give headaches so that has to be factored in when using it.

I had a roll of "blue painters tape" that I got in the dollar store on my bench. The tape has a rough texture on it, so it has some "grip". So I cut a small piece and wrapped it around the glue bottle cap.... If you leave the glued parts alone long enough before handling them again, the bond is very strong and it is in fact almost impossible to cleanly separate them again. This is due to the fact that the cement essentially melts the plastic and the parts fuse together once the chemicals evaporate.Liquid type plastic cement that is designed to work with plastic models and other similar plastic materials found in model making. This EXTRA THIN formula cement is used to glue together plastic model kits that use polystyrene plastic. The extra thin formula allows the modeler to glue together small pieces that require pin point accuracy and finesse. According to the contents it also contains acetone. Plumbers that I have worked with used it for waste pipes So I ran out of this and the LHS are all closed but not the hardware stores. I began searching for the ingredients and found the MSDS. So sharing here for record and in case others want to know. But the problem is that my local hobby-shop does not have a cleaner either, but the factory and the household market have chemical components for making this glue myself. Optionally, once the cement is in the joint, you can press the halves more firmly. This will cause some of the melted plastic to run out of the joint line basically filling the resulting seam line. If done properly, there’s no need for putty.

If you did, you could use their airbrush cleaner instead, which contains the same solvents in an almost identical ratio. The extra thin cement is easy to use once you get the hang of it. With traditional liquid cement, you would apply the cement to a part and then you would attach it where it belongs. With extra thin cement, the steps are a bit different.

The difference is only in the proportion of components for the glue 50% to 50% for the cleaner 49% to 51% (as far as I can remember, but I may be wrong - the memory can malfunction), as for me 1% is not a very big difference. Limonene is a chemical added to change the smell to stop solvent abuse or remove the strong smell so its more friendly to children. I don't recall when I read the tip (may have been here on BM) but Tamiya Airbrush Cleaner is almost the exact same formula as Tamiya Extra Thin. I gave it a try and Airbrush Cleaner glues styrene just fine. I then used it to assemble two wing tank halves. The glue dried to the touch in a 1/2 hour. It was ready to sand in about an hour. I then sanded the seam and the glued joint was smooth.