Official Luthiers Forum!

Being both a guitar builder and a RC Airplane builder for many years I can say I have seen CA hold up for many things quite well. That said and without predigest to any one point of view I can also say CA is a more brittle adhesive. Subject to cold temp shock failure depending on the sub straight it is used on. Also while medium and thick CA are gap filling due to their brittleness not all joints in model aviation are good places for CA. there are times the resilience reflex of softer adhesive like epoxy will prevent damage to surfaces under sudden but short lived stresses like landings. I fly two 80”+ wingspan 15 to 30 lbs planes that I would never consider using CA in areas such as vertical and horizontal stabilizer joints and or main landing gear structures due to its brittleness. I also fly many park flyers that weigh less than 2 lbs and use nothing but CA on.

In lutherie I think the biggest issue is the reparability or clean joint separation or removal issue and the end grain seep issue. I have used CA a lot for binding but am moving away from it in favor of slower set glues. I use CA to pore fill in some situations and pre bending of Ziricaote to avoid with grain splits.

CA is a god send for many tasks. But like any adhesive there are good places to use it and some not so good places to use it. Personally I would not use it for a plate seam joint but that is just my opinion.