The Glue that Binds

I used to muddle along with ordinary superglue – the kind that welds your fingers together faster than it touches the part you’re trying to fix. The result was always the same: whatever I meant to mend fell apart again, while I ended up pacing the kitchen with a teaspoon glued to my thumb.

Then the bloke who paints our cars took pity on me and handed over a trade secret: SUF-FIX with its magic activator spray. He uses it to repair plastic car panels and swore blind it was the business. I tried it once and became a convert. The routine is simple – squeeze, spray, done. Not the other way round, unless you fancy gluing the nozzle shut and making the world’s most expensive single-use applicator.

It’s brilliant stuff for almost everything. Cracked plastic trims, odd jobs round the house, even the sort of bodge job you’d rather your wife didn’t see – all sorted in seconds. And here’s a money-saving tip: the spray will probably outlast the glue. When you run dry, don’t get mugged into buying a whole new kit at trade prices. Just grab a few tubes of bog-standard pound-shop superglue – the spray doesn’t care what label the glue came in, it’ll set it just the same.

The clever bit is how the spray works. You don’t have to soak the whole joint – just hit one spot and it sets off a cascade, like a row of dominoes falling or a fuse burning along the seam. The glue hardens in a wave that races through the joint in seconds. Mesmerising if you’re watching closely, and terrifying if your fingers are in the way.

My downfall came when I tried to bond a joining strip between two roof panels inside the motorhome. Perfect job for SUF-FIX – until I realised the bead of glue would only dribble back down the nozzle. That’s when desperation drove me to the syringe trick. I decanted some glue, squirted it upwards and, against all odds, it worked. The syringe was ruined of course, frozen solid after ten seconds – but I can get them by the score from my wife, so it wasn’t a tragedy.

So yes, even the Kryptonite can be dodged if you’re quick and armed with the right medical supplies. But really – you’d think by now someone would have invented a glue applicator with an airlock exit to fire the stuff uphill. They could flog it on late-night TV: “Introducing the Anti-Gravity Nozzle™ – the world’s first upside-down glue gun! Fix your ceilings, mend your loft hatch, bond your aerial to the moon! Just three easy payments of £19.99.” Of course, it doesn’t exist, so for now gravity still wins – though at least my roof panel is stuck fast, sealed in place by a chain reaction worthy of a fireworks display.