Lexember Day 8

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm doing Lexember this month. The idea is to make (or learn) a new word every day. This can be for a conlang or a natural language.


December 8
Gaffer jam -- a thick gel that comes in various colors and can be used to fasten things together or make small shapes. Stored in small packets, it air-dries quickly when opened, so you have to work fast. This is retro-engineered tech from a captured glue gun, so it's gizmology rather than super-gizmology. The name comes from gaffer tape.
[Polychrome Heroics vocabulary]

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Sounds almost exactly like Sugru ... although slight difference in texture as sugru is more like play-do at first, not a gel.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

A closer match to that:

Splae -- a plastic clay which becomes malleable when submerged in hot water but cools into an unbreakable texture. It can also be melted and set in a gizmotronic liquid that makes it resistant to ordinary temperature changes, if you don't want to risk it collapsing accidentally. It is usually supplied in granules, but also comes as moldable slabs, the latter popular for making customized medical braces for things like a wrenched wrist. This WeGeex product is cheap and found in many repair kits now. The setting fluid costs more, but like Splae itself is reusable.

Also compare with:
http://www.plastimake.com/

Gaffer jam is kind of more like a moldable epoxy, except it's activated by air instead of by mixing two components.

Re: Well ...

[siliconshaman]

I think you're confusing sugru with milliput. Sugru is an air-activated epoxy, you take it out of the packet and you don't need to do anything else to it to make it useable. It's like play-do that's both sticky and goes very hard over time. (smells very similar too, for some reason.)

Milliput is a two-part epoxy that you need to mix together, although both are clay-like in texture. Nothing happens until you mix them, and then you get an exothermic reaction as it polymerises and goes hard. Advantage however is that Milliput will harden even underwater. (or theoretically in a vacuum)

[fyreharper]

Sounds like fast-drying sugru to me too!