Making cyanoacrylate glue dispensing tools from darning needles

This idea is not mine, I picked up the idea from reading the forums on ngrm-online.com. Dispensing superglue (cyanoacrylate adhesive) to stick small components can be difficult because the thin superglues are very runny and you can easily flood the item if trying to dispense it from the nozzle on the bottle or tube. You can use cocktail sticks etc. but they cannot be easily cleaned for reuse and as such are a disposable item. 

I bought some cheap stainless steel darning needles from China via eBay. You need to buy stainless steel needles because cheap plated needles can catalyse the glue to set before you have time to use it!  Darning needles were chosen over sewing needles because you don’t need or want a sharp point for this tool.

I used a diamond cutting disk in my Dremel tool to cut off the end of the eye of the needle to leave a two prong ‘fork’.

Cutting the eye of the darning needle

2 prong converted arning needle

 

The darning needle was fastened to a wooden handle using heat-shrink tubing.

To use the tool you just dip it into a drop of superglue and it wicks up into the prong. Touching this tool to the item to be glued and the superglue flows out of the fork by surface tension and onto the workpiece. To clean the tool you can dip into acetone to remove any accrued glue.

Using the darning needle superglue dispenser