I have just started this wonderful hobby and am wondering which is the best type of glue to use to join two painted plastic parts together ?. I have tried Tamiya thin but it makes a mess of the paint, and the parts don’t actually sick together. All help appreciated.
You need to scrape off the paint to get a join.
Liquid adhesives like Tamiya Thin work by melting some of the plastic and fusing them together. Paint is just going to prevent that from happening.
Ideally you want to glue as much of the kit together as you can before you paint.
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As noted above, best practice is to scrape the surfaces to be glue clean of paint. However, I have had very good results using Weld-On # 3 in gluing together painted parts. Weld-On gives a very good bond without destroying the surrounding paint. Weld-On is a commercial acrylic/plastic glue and is available from a plastic shop or can be found on Amazon. HTH. Dave.
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Depending on what is being glued I’ll use super glue, or gator grip/liquid gloss medium. The super glue is stronger but can’t be messy.
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Personally I hardly glue any painted part. Everything is assembled and then painted.
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I’ve only been at AFV for just over 12 months. To start with I painted every part. Cleaned the paint of where glue had to go. Hard lesson.
Now I build as much in sub assemblies as I can. Then I glue.
But I also found good old Revell Contacta did an OK job.
bruce
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Another thing I’ll do is pre plan and mask off attachment points where possible so that they never get painted
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I’m hoping someone who attaches photo-etch railings to ships will chime in here. I’m about to do another ship and I thought I’d attach the railings and then paint it but I can’t figure out how to do the masking for that…
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Gator grip might be the solution for this. If you wet it it will flow into location holes and then dry with a pretty good hold, excess can be cleaned with water
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I use Tamiya ultra thin and apply it with the fine brush provided. It has a great capiliary action and providing you don’t use too much, doesn’t eat the paint away and doesn’t appear to mark areas where the glue ran into inadvertently or you put in a place by mistake when its dry.
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Russian garbage hardly counts… 
To be fair to TETC - usually in the process of applying the cement using the brush, the paint comes away anyway. It removes it very easily. So I don’t really have an issue with it.
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Basic rule: assemble as much as possible before painting.
The decision point is when some part that will remain visible will become impossible to paint.
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I agree with this, I’ve never really had much problem gluing painted parts
Planning goes a very long way. I’ll usually build in subassembly im confident I can paint adequately. Then I’ll try to make sure glue spots are in inconspicuous areas to further hide any issues
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