glue for hand rolled tubes

[MadMat]

I have been hand rolling my tubes and using water thinned pva. I have been getting decent results, but I'll admit there's room for improvement. One thing that concerns me is pva's tendency to soften under heat, not to mention the expense, since I am going through a lot of it. Would wheat paste be a viable alternative? Something else?? I am open to suggestions.

[schroedinger]

Casein glue.

[Sparx88]

Titebond original

 

The rocket in my avatar was a 1# using titebond. 3/16" wall thickness.

Edited March 24, 2016 by Sparx88

[Col]

£10 a litre

[stix]

MadMat, there's a guy on these forums that has posted lots of info on glues for rolling tubes. He's done lots of testing and loves glue that much that I'm sure he sleeps with a bucket of it in his bed, dreams of it, and most likely has it with his breakfast cereal.

 

I can't remember if the exact formula was ever given but I think it consisted of a mixture of casein, dextrin and sodium silicate and of course water.

 

From what I remember the glue was very successful and cheap - certainly less than £10 a litre.

[schroedinger]

You propably mean MKN, if i remember rifht.

[MadMat]

I remember making casein glue a LONG time ago. It was an experiment from a chemistry book I had when I was a kid. Basically, you made the casein by adding a small amount of vinegar to warm skim milk. You then filtered out what curdled, washed it out with water and dried it. The glue was made by adding calcium oxide (not exactly sure) to the casein and water until the desired consistency was obtained. Not that I'm going to go through all of this, but it was kind of interesting remembering all this.

[OldMarine]

Found this thread on tube rolling glue:

http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/topic/10871-dextrin-glue/?hl=glue

 

I think this was the one Stix was referring to.

Edited March 24, 2016 by OldMarine

[MadMat]

Thanks for the info guys. I think I'm going to try some experiments. I have flour, corn starch, sodium silicate (water glass) and can make casein. Time for some testing!

[stix]

Found this thread on tube rolling glue:

http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/topic/10871-dextrin-glue/?hl=glue

 

I think this was the one Stix was referring to.

 

Yeah OM that's one of the links and also this one started by MKN

http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/topic/10063-tube-roller-4oz-1-and-3-or-more/

It's a long read but lots of good info.

 

The person I was actually referring to wasn't mkn.

[schroedinger]

You can also just buy the casein, its way cheaper then making it from milk.

[stix]

Perhaps it may be cheaper, but you would miss all the fun of making it yourself . In fact, I couldn't find casein for sale here in Australia, so I made some using the readily available info on this forum. Unless low fat milk powder and vinegar is in short supply in your country, it costs very little to make a lot.

 

Embarrassingly I haven't even used it yet. It sits in a container on a lonely shelf somewhere. Much like the cooked glutenous rice I have have in my freezer - some day to be thawed, rolled into thin cakes and parched in the oven - then crushed into powder. ie. SGRS hopefully??.

 

There is actual value in making something yourself. Learning from others + perseverance and experimentation is it's OWN reward.

[Col]

Its expensive here too. Skimmed milk is cheap and cheaper still when its past its sell by date.. your not going to drink it

[schroedinger]

Ok, where i live it's the other way around.

But stix I remeber when i was over in Oz i once bought the cheap skimmed milk powder from woolis, you can't drink that stuff, but yeah the price for one kg was about as much as 4 L of cheap milk cost here.

[stix]

Its expensive here too. Skimmed milk is cheap and cheaper still when its past its sell by date.. your not going to drink it

 

Agreed Col, it is NOT expensive, I didn't say it was. Your comment is ambiguous and seems to suggest that skimmed milk powder is expensive. Perhaps you meant "in-expensive"?

 

Ok, where i live it's the other way around.

But stix I remeber when i was over in Oz i once bought the cheap skimmed milk powder from woolis, you can't drink that stuff, but yeah the price for one kg was about as much as 4 L of cheap milk cost here.

 

Same thing Shroeds, how and the hell do you come up with that I think that skimmed milk powder is expensive?... IT IS NOT in Aus.

 

Or perhaps you and Col have come up with some ulterior plan to f*ck me over and mess with my mind. Well, congratulations, you've done a bloody good job!!

 

I can't see how my previous comments could be mis-interpreted.

[Col]

lol, i was referring to casein powder being expensive in the previous post. I agree skimmed milk is cheap, i`ve no clue what skimmed milk powder costs In the grand scheme of things none of it is as expensive as buying decent quality commercial tubes, pva at £10 a litre would probably be enough to make 89 1lb x 3/16 wall tubes. If you can buy the same quality of tube for 21p/30c or less..just buy them

Edited March 25, 2016 by Col

[schroedinger]

 

Same thing Shroeds, how and the hell do you come up with that I think that skimmed milk powder is expensive?... IT IS NOT in Aus.

 

Or perhaps you and Col have come up with some ulterior plan to f*ck me over and mess with my mind. Well, congratulations, you've done a bloody good job!!

 

I can't see how my previous comments could be mis-interpreted.

Mission accomplished ;-)

 

Noone ever said that, all that was noted is that what ever is cheaper greatly depends on where you live, for me pure casein is about 10 $ /kg and akim milk powder 15 $/kg.

[Fulmen]

If you shop around a bit PVA shouldn't be too expensive. I use it for all my tubes, simply because it doesn't go bad like wheat paste and they dry much faster. The trick is to use diluted PVA (say 2-3 parts glue to 1 water) and pre-wet the paper. I use a sponge or rag and wet it enough for it to swell (it will wrinkle up if it lies plat on the rolling board) and turn limp, but not so much that it stays wet on the surface. Afther the paper has had a minute to soak the thinned PVA can be spread quite thin with a brush, and the excess is pushed along as you roll. There is a slightly delicate balance between how wet the paper is and how thin you make the glue, some water should soak into the paper as you apply it but not so much it becomes tacky.

[Col]

You should aim to reduce the amount of water going into the paper by increasing the solids. Increasing the water content weakens the glue and can lead to wrinkling,shrinkage and out of round tubes. You want the paper to be evenly coated with a thin film of glue that tacks up just before you roll it. If you have a wave of excess glue running in front of the mandrel, its way too much

I`d recommend using a glue machine if you can find one cheap enough. I use this with the small tube rolling machine, it handles paper upto a foot wide and does about 18" per second.

https://youtu.be/dC6zCvUFOY0

 

Edited March 26, 2016 by Col

[Fulmen]

Increasing the water content weakens the glue and can lead to wrinkling,shrinkage and out of round tubes.

 

With dry paper, yes. This is because paper swells when it becomes wet.

But by wiping both sides with a sponge and letting it rest for a minute you can pre-swell the paper, this allows you to use far less glue. It also slows down the setting of the glue, which makes it possible to work out any excess. You don't really need much glue as long as the tube is rolled tightly enough.

 

It takes a bit of trial and error, but it works.

[lloyd]

Fulmen, explain, please, what happens when that 'swelled' paper dries again?

 

I have never heard of pre-wetting paper to roll tubes until this very thread. Every process I've seen - both amateur and commercial - seeks to get the minimum amount of water into the assembly, in order to minimize shrinkage and distortion.

 

LLoyd

[Fulmen]

Well, it will of course shrink again if it can, but since it's rolled up on the former it has nowhere to shrink to. So all it can do is stretch. It also seems more permeable to moisture than other tubes, so it dries more evenly. Perhaps that allows it to shrink more uniformly?

 

I'm not saying it's better than craft and wheat paste, done properly those are pretty much perfect. But they take forever to dry, and must dry on the former. I recently made a decent batch of 16x22mm tubes, and they can be taken off the former after 12hours or so and are completely dry after 1-2 days. They come out rock hard and rattle like wood. I've used these for 3grams flash salutes, and they leave behind a lot of 5-15mm solid pieces of the tube. Poorly made tubes tend to shred into confetti, but not these.

 

I've never been able to make good tubing from dry paper and undiluted PVA. The paper inevitably swells some (and unevenly) during the rolling and the thick glue tends to produce blobs that can't be rolled out as it sets too fast. But perhaps that's just me?

[Col]

 

With dry paper, yes. This is because paper swells when it becomes wet.

But by wiping both sides with a sponge and letting it rest for a minute you can pre-swell the paper, this allows you to use far less glue. It also slows down the setting of the glue, which makes it possible to work out any excess. You don't really need much glue as long as the tube is rolled tightly enough.

 

It takes a bit of trial and error, but it works.

I`ve tried pretty much every method and and every kind of glue in my quest

Heres a few things to consider. Glue tacks as it loses moisture, that is, the water loss causes a rise in the solids percentage. If you can set the solids percentage close to the tack point before its applied to the paper, you`ll only need to lose a very small amount of moisture to the dry paper to tip the solids percentage over the edge. You`ll have a very tacky piece of paper with almost no excess water. The tubes will come off the mandrel dimensionally stable and fairly dry. Almost no shrinkage or deformation to worry about and they`ll be dry in hours, not days.

 

Weigh out 10g of your glue, let it dry out completely and reweigh whats left behind. That`ll give you an idea of the percentage of water going into the paper.

[Fulmen]

The problem with that approach is that the glue sets too fast, leaving no time to roll out any globs of glue. I can imagine it working with a glue machine, but with hand application I could never get a good, consistent result. The straight PVA was just too thick to get an thin, even coat. Too little and it dries up before you have time to roll, too much causes swelling and trapped glue.

[lloyd]

Fulmen, you need to work on your glue application method. You don't HAVE to roll the entire length in a "single stroke". Concentrate on thin, even, quick-tacking coats, even if it's only a few inches at a time! If you have 'globs', you've either got 'globby' glue (with improperly-dissolved bits in it), or you're not applying it evenly. (Have you considered a small paint roller to do it?)

 

Lloyd