This seemed like a good idea for dispensing small drops of acrylic solvent while gluing spiders together:
It’s the Buffer Extraction Tube from a COVID-19 rapid test kit with a short brass tube jammed in its dropper tip. The longer brass tube let me suck that dose of solvent into the tube without any of the hassle required to pour the liquid from a big can into a little tube.
Tell me you didn’t save those things because you thought they didn’t look like they might come in handy for something.
Well, that turned out to be a Bad Idea™, because whatever plastic that tube is made out of cracks when exposed to the hellish mixture in SCIGRIP #3 solvent adhesive. The tube didn’t dissolve or melt, it just cracked when you (well, I) squeezed the sides.
My Box o’ Test Kits has a few other types of tubes, but I used a syringe from the inkjet refilling era and that worked OK.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
3 responses to “COVID Buffer Extraction Tube vs. Acrylic Solvent Adhesive”
No inkjet refilling anymore? Lately, I’ve had a strong but very irrational desire to acquire a wide format dot matrix printer along with a box of green-bar fan-fold paper. I really can’t say why.
The Epson ET-3830 has tanks into which you pour bottles of ink. It’s so easy it makes me wonder why they didn’t do that right from the beginning … :mutter:
Hey, want a strip of tractor-feed address labels to go along with your green-bar paper?
My travel kit includes a right-angle syringe from the vet’s office, probably used to flush [something] with saline. Properly recleaned, it’s a barely adequate alternative to the water pick unit I use at home. My medical/toiletry travel bag carries enough stuff, so I forego anything electric.
I never had a COVID test kit (our experience with COVID MK I long predated test kit availability in the county), but the dropper looks useful. Somewhere, I think I still have a bellows glue bottle that served to blow dust out of my 1983 vintage HP-150 touch screen computer. (LEDs and photo sensors in dust-collecting pockets. What fun!) It may have been used for glue after the happy day when I sold the HP.