[reikimaster]

Is there a hobby shop near you that handles radio controlled airplanes? If so, they'll have accellerator. I used it when building model planes and actually I use it for doing stone dust inlays on native american style flutes.

 

[reikimaster]

yeah you don't want to use acetone. Acetone dissolves CA. For a home-made accelerator try a tablespoon of baking soda in about 8 ounces of water. Spray it out of a fine mist sprayer, a pump sprayer, whatever you have that will mist it on as fine as possible. As always, try it on something a bit less important first, but this mixture is what I used to use when building model airplanes using CA before the "kickers" were readily available.

Accelerators work by enhancing the alkaline conditions during polymerization. (Which is why Alka-Seltzer works..but it has other stuff in it that can cloud the CA) You can actually put accelerator on one side of a joint and CA on the other and then put them together. That works well sometimes on materials that are difficult to bond.

 

[reikimaster]

HMmm... I've never seen it turn anything dark. I always used it on balsa, birch plywood, basswood, pine....trying to think what else.... all light colored woods though and never saw dark spots. It's *possible* that this is due to something left in the bottle, but I don't have any way of knowing.

 

[reikimaster]

the white, chalky-looking coating makes sense. The baking soda and water is alkaline. So what you're seeing is probably similar to salt stains that we see up here in winter. (Road salt...gets on shoes... they're wet and when they dry tou see white deposits). Should be just a surface coating if that's the case. You may want to mix up a slightly weaker batch of accelerator and see if that minimizes the residue. Also make sure the baking soda is thoroughly dissolved in the water.