Handy Hobby Tip: The Secret to Glue-free Hands…

…is to not use your hands.

Of course you have to use your hands when crafting. So, take the advice of one of my favorite YouTube crafters, the Crafsman, and “wear you some gloves”. We’ll come back to this.

Great glue!  But not on my hands

I bought 16 oz of Starbond Heavy Thin CA Glue‡ back in November. It’s great stuff but quite runny (by design). The glue arrived in a large shipping bottle, accompanied by four 2 oz refillable applicator bottles and a pack of micro-tip applicator attachments. I quickly found that bottle-to-bottle glue transfers and poorly seated applicator tips meant a crunked-up, gooey bottle. 

So, the post title may be click-baity, but I mean it when I say don’t use your hands when using super glue. More accurately, make a DIY, disposable glue brush.

Take a piece of thin steel wire and pinch it into a tight loop maybe 20mm long. Insert the wire into an Exacto-knife handle and form the “bristles” by wrapping the loop with masking tape. The masking tape extends about double the length of the wire, with its tip shaped by a couple of snips from some scissors. 

DIY Glue Brush

Once I’m ready to start bonding stuff with CA glue, I’ll put a couple of drops on a piece of non-porous scrap and then dab it with my DIY glue brush. The flexible masking tape tip makes it easy to apply tiny amounts of CA glue just where I want it, without the frustration of gluing pieces of the build to my fingers. I’ll make two or three of these masking tape brushes at the same time, and when the tip of one gets gunked up with glue, I’ll swap it for a new one. By the time I’m on the last brush tip, the CA glue on the first one is cured, and I’ll snip off the fouled area and be back to a fresh, if slightly shorter, glue brush.

Using this little glue brush I’m able to keep 90% of the super glue off my fingers. Repositioning a freshly glued piece, or handling a leaky glue bottle means I’m still going to get sticky fingers though, so it’s back to the gloves discussion, nitrile gloves specifically.

Pasta Bot says "half gloves still count."

I’m probably not alone in feeling that I lose some dexterity when wearing even thin nitrile gloves. My technique to preserving some dexterity is to leave a couple of fingers ungloved, preferably a non-dominant finger I don’t use reflexively, like the pinky or ring-finger. I find I don’t need to cut up my nitrile gloves to customize them; the poor quality control in their manufacture means that a glove is almost guaranteed to tear on the first doffing. Instead of tossing a torn glove, I’ll salvage the finger tips and reuse them repeatedly.

‡I don't get any kickbacks from Starbond, I just want to give praise where its deserved.  Great glue.