Bondic UV light curing glue

[Chris Mudd]

Han anyone tried any products like "Bondic"?

these are the UV light curing glues that are being advertised right now.

I could think of a million places it could be handy, but I was raised with a dis-trust of the "As Advertised on TV" stuff.

Chris

[David King]

Looks like an epoxy monomer with UV initiator. These materials have been around for decades and widely used in the dental, nail salon, printing and windshield repair industries. The stuff I have experience with is a for encapsulation called a doming epoxy. It cures with small 4w UV fluorescent bulbs or in direct sunlight. It's very clear and very hard but it doesn't stick to wood particularly well. Any of the material that soaks into the wood grain won't cure and eventually causes the stuff to delaminate. Its takes a lot longer than 4 seconds so I'm doubtful that an LED can put out the W/m2 to accomplish that. The composite that dentists use is opaque white so that must slow down the cure though they do multiple thin layers with between 30 seconds and 2 minutes of curing time.

[Peter Wilcox]

Anybody have experience with this stuff since these posts, not necessarily instrument related?

[John Tuttle]

I use Bondic and other UV light-cured glued in technology repairs. It's great for surface coverage and protection applications and cable abrasion repair. successive layers can be applied after curing to build body and I haven't witnessed delamination in that scenario. Incomplete curing causes issues when you can't get good light penetration to AL of the applied Bodic solution. So, you're not going to be able to use it for gluing one part to another, at least not with the stuff I've used. It's great for cable and solder joint protection and is extremely abrasion resistant. I'll apply a drop or two to cover a solder joint at the circuit board of an endpin jack circuit board connection for a bridge pickup wire. I've also used it to secure a wire to the inside of a guitar and had marginal success. As previously stated, if it soaks into the wood, it won't cure properly and then has poor adhesion. I have spread a thin layer across a path of wood with my finger and then quickly cured it to create a base layer which I then stuck an upper layer to and that seemed to work better. In general, I stopped using it for guitars as it really wasn't "a better mousetrap"

[David King]

I really don't see much use for them besides repairing a nut of historic value that's too low with a matching color.