How forgiving is contact cement?

[Dead Crab]

Once cushions are cemented to the subrail with contact cement and the cement sets, can they be taken off or repositioned without damaging the rubber and/or wood?

 

[tsp&b]

Depends

It depends on the quality of the contact cement, subrail and the rubber. Most of the time in my personal experience the if anything is going to be hurt it would be the wood. but everything will have to be cleaned. The surface of the wood may need some minor repair work, filling and resurfacing etc. but that should not be a serious problem.

 

[realkingcobra]

Once cushions are cemented to the subrail with contact cement and the cement sets, can they be taken off or repositioned without damaging the rubber and/or wood?

In most cases, the rubber can be peeled off, such is the case when replacing rail rubber in the first place. That is why I use 3M Scotch Grip Neutral 10 to replace rail rubber. Anyone that uses a wood glue based rubber to install rail rubber in MY opinion should guarantee the rail rubber for life, and if it goes bad..they should replace it for free, as that kind of glue sticks so hard that you'll rip the rail rubber in half just trying to remove it, which leaves the other half still attached to the sub rail, what a nightmare. Rails attached with contact cement can be removed and reinstalled if you screw up installing them in the first place...but try and get it right the first time and you don't have to deal with them the second time around.

Glen

 

[Tom334]

Anyone ever use hot animal glue to glue the rubber on? That is the old way of doing it, but for a first attempt it would seem to give you time to make sure the rubber is where you want it unlike contact cement. Comments????

 

[Dead Crab]

Well, I glued my cushions on today using Barge (TM) Cement.

It was pretty well behaved. I did have to do one repositioning, and it let me do that. We'll see how it holds.

Cut the cushions and do facings tomorrow.