everyone welcome to primal reef and
acrylics today is going to be an
informational video on a do-it-yourself
or how to bond weld acrylics there are
many methods of gluing things such as
wood you got willing method for metal
but whereas where where as it comes to
acrylic a lot of people are actually
confused or don't know how to glue two
pieces of plastic together your
conventional method of gluing with your
regular Home Depot glue would not work
epoxy again it's a substance of glue
which which chemically bonds two
chemicals together and then it hardens
it on whatever surface you want but
where as it comes to acrylic it's
actually a little bit tougher to find
little certain information online about
this a lot of companies do actually make
them what it is sorry is there's a
solution called weld on one two three
and four what it is it's a water
substance liquid very thin what you see
in a little vial here alright with the I
believe it's a 25 gauge needle when you
go to a plastic or acrylic store I'm
here in Toronto Ontario Canada which is
in the Greater Toronto Area of the GTA
we have I have a company that I deal
with called plastic world's so if you
guys do decide to go down there the ones
that live in the GTA do refer the the
guys Michael repeater the after the
owners of the company that you you've
seen the informational videos online I
primal reef in acrylics so hence going
forward when you bond acrylic there's
two things you really really have to
watch out for one is the thickness of
acrylic you are bonding together over
here I have a 3/8 yes
3/8 of an inch now the reason why I say
thickness is because sometimes you can
get acrylics and different sheets
anywhere from I believe it's 1/8 1/16
all the way up to quarter
quarter inch 3/8 half inch three
quarters of an inch one inch and so
forth the for the video here the reason
why I say watch out for what type
acrylic you use is because in bonding
acrylic what's most important is having
one of the most flat or smoothest
surface as you can when you're putting
two pieces together unlike metal you can
have different types of metal and use
welding method to join we're using two
metals metal and then the welding
machine will actually have depending on
what type of welding machine you buy
will have a different substance of metal
that bonds it together by melting or
fusing two pieces together this is
similar but again we're using liquid a
chemical compound here which be careful
some of you may be alert may have
allergic reactions to it so wears gloves
if you want please read the instructions
on the chemical bottle when you do buy
it I'll go make another video in the
future what type of chemicals are there
or weld-on chemicals are there to fuse
two pieces of plastics together so for
that being said I got two pieces here I
have both 3/8 one of them is a soft cut
edge I don't know if you can see
properly I'm going to try to glitter
this but a soft cut edge is just a
regular saw a miter saw that passed and
cut this piece of acrylic here the
second is also just a scrap once again
it's a frosted sheet this piece here was
sawed cut you will see an indent groove
there
a couple holes but I actually sanded
this part smooth as possible as I can so
what I use I use a little sponge which
you can pick up at a regular Home Depot
so the sponge has two velcro side edges
and it has two different types of sponge
layer you have the regular soft sponge
so if I squeeze sorry if I squeeze this
in you can see is very soft now the
other side it's pretty sturdy very very
stiff I use this site to sand all the
pieces down I believe this grid here is
a 120 grit sandpaper so I use this to
sand
the edges first and then I'll take the
velcro off and put the 1200 grid on to
the other side and then keep filing it
down or smooth it down up until you get
a pretty smooth surface now the best way
to flatten an edge when you have acrylic
is going through a router a router would
give you one of the most flat smooth
surfaces as possible it's not going to
leave saw-cut marks anywhere so with a
little bottle there's a little technique
when you use this bottle guys and ladies
sorry when you're applying this glue if
you just tip it upside down which I'm
going to do right now you will see the
drops come out if you can see there the
drops are coming out okay you don't want
to do this because when you're bonding
professional pieces together you're
gonna have glue and spot marks
everywhere on your acrylic so if you're
building a sump like what I do you can't
use that method what you got to do is
squeeze a bottle if you can see there
squeeze a bottle as much as you can I
would say about 60 percent of the way
depending again how long of a piece your
grill gluing so when you tip it upside
down the vacuum of the air is actually
sucking the solution up the air sucking
it out sucking up so if you see the
bubbles in there this prevents any
liquid from dropping so when you go to
an acrylic piece you can actually stop
the air and you can press down very
gently now you see the drops come out if
you see right there but if I let go the
bubbles return again and there's no
solution dropping so that's one
technique that I use so going ahead with
the socket piece I'm going to show you
how if I want to point it right around
there sorry if the camera angles a
little off so here we go I'm going to
glue this piece again I'm going to
squeeze the bottle now okay tip it
upside down the bubbles are coming out
and with one hand I'm going to press
down on the acrylic very gently
and I'm going to just squeeze the bottle
just a little bit so the acrylic glue
comes out if you can see there I'm
running the glue all the way across now
if you probably just seen that jump you
see that there are dark spots let me use
a pen there's a dark spot there and
there's a dark spot here because this
wasn't a very smooth surface you can see
that what's happening here is when I ran
the glue from your right sorry your left
to the right of the critic there's a gap
there now this part did not get fused
however these two ends did this is a
very very bad cut so when you have
acrylic that you want to bond or fuse
together be very careful you don't have
these pieces what I like to do sometimes
is I will place a flat piece on acrylic
whoops there's a little bit of glue
there place a flat piece on acrylic and
see and put my face down right to the
edge and see if I I'll see a little air
gap in between if I see an air gap and
this piece was a saw cut I'm gonna have
to go ahead and file away certain parts
of this sorry sand away certain parts of
the critic when you have a router cut
piece you're now going to have these
joints you're now going to have these
air pockets and offcuts so now I'm going
to go ahead and glue this piece now this
please here has a couple little dents
and joints however this piece here is
actually perfectly cut and it's very
very smooth so I'll show you once again
so again what you want to do is squeeze
the bottle about 60% of the way tip it
upside down you see the air bubbles come
out there we go
air bubbles are coming up so you now
you're safe to go you're not going to
have any any spots on the the critic
sheet on the base pressing the bottle
squeezing it now you will see there's a
very smooth line of acrylic sorry the
glue solution
but then again now it's stopped okay so
if you guys seen that there's a very
nice dark shaded part from here all the
way across
up until that little dent that I had in
the acrylic this is what you call a
perfect bond now this I achieve this was
a saw cut piece and I achieve this by
using a sandpaper in two different grids
again 120 grid for the blue and then the
brown is a 1200 grid 1200 the bonding
time between this glue though well down
for that I'm using it's one to three
minutes for the fixture time now fix
your time doesn't mean it's 100% glued
yet so at that point from one to two
minutes you don't want to touch your
click at all leave it alone anywhere
from five to ten minutes is the chemical
portion of softening the two plastics so
they're in the phases of being molded
together or weld it together as one
uniform piece again at this point you
don't want to start working on that
piece by moving it lifting it or putting
pressure on it because what's going to
happen soon as you put pressure right
now if you hear from the tap it's
already pretty solid but because of a
chemical is still bonding and fusing it
together there's still a lot of soft
sections in there you want to allow at
least 12 to 24 hours I like to give it
48 hours for it to bond 100% small
pieces you're okay like this for me too
for as a sample I'm going to move it
around but in the future when you guys
do have pieces give it a lot of time now
if you can see here right oh boy right
there okay hopefully you guys can see
this two different pieces right here you
have a piece that was glued here but
then it missed a big gap however this
section here you can see it's
perfectly done there's a little bit of
gap in between there now what you can do
for those gap is you can use the whale
Don glue you can use the world on glue
to run it again on the other side there
you go now you have a sealed joint I
hope you guys can see this in the okay
yeah there you go so that's a that's a
soft and perfect joint again I all
highly recommend everybody get a router
cut edge unless you want to go through a
whole bunch of acrylic and practice and
play with it first hope you guys do like
the video on how to glue or weld acrylic
if you guys have any questions post them
below I will be posting more posting
more videos on how to do it yourself
acrylic pieces and again this you can
build anything you want in the future
alright guys thank you for watching
primal reefs stay tuned for another
video on do-it-yourself