try searching cyanoacrylate accelerator
On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com> wrote:
> A couple decades ago I was, for a brief time, a (not very good) hardware
> design engineer. In the lab, we used cyanoacrylate to glue parts to
> boards, and we used spray bottles of activator to harden the stuff. And
> so I learned that Krazy glue and related products, which normally only
> stick well to fingers, can be made to stick where and when you want them
> to, if you just use a spritz of activator on it.
>
> After that little epiphany, I purchased cyanoacrylate at the local Radio
> Shack a number of times, and always got hardener with it. Later I
> purchased some at a hardware store, and again got the hardener with it.
> The stuff was great; it would stick, no questions asked, to just about
> anything -- as long as one used the activator.
>
> Then a few years went by during which I didn't buy the stuff -- didn't
> do any projects which needed it, hadn't used up the old stock.
>
> And one day I went to the local hardware store and looked for
> cyanoacrylate with hardener. No luck -- none on the shelves. I asked a
> clerk; he'd *never* *heard* of hardener for cyanoacrylate! (Of course
> that just means they hadn't carried it any time in the last couple
> months, but none the less it was a bit startling.)
>
> Later I checked Radio Shack. Same deal -- no hardener, clerks had never
> heard of the stuff. Hardener is for epoxy, that's all they knew about.
>
> I've looked in other stores since; it's always the same. They don't
> carry it and as far as they know, there is no such thing, and never was.
>
> Somebody seems to have erased cyanoacrylate activator from the page of
> time. Anybody here know what happened?
>
> Why'd it get pulled from the market? Does the stuff turn out to make
> your head swell up and turn purple or something? Or can you get high
> off of it?
>
> (Or have I just been unlucky in 5 out of 5 stores I've tried, and the
> stuff really is still on the shelves *somewhere*?)
>
>
