In my experience having coached quite a few students through construction for the glider event (and about 50 years of model airplane building), accelerant is unnecessary. If you are referring to the Kurt Krempertz video on the AMAGlider website, he uses accelerant for instant setting of super glue (CA) for all joints.I saw on one of the Launched Glider videos that an "accelerant" is used to dry the CA glue much more quickly. Does anyone know where I can buy that (without having to order and wait since we are in a bit of a rush?) I thought they said it is sold at Walmart, but I couldn't find it there. And are there any types that are preferred?
My students for the last couple of years also constructed the Stan Buddenbohm Littl Sweep kit as their first glider and all construction was done with fresh, good quality, super glue (ZAP Medium is my favorite) and joints set in about 60 seconds with this glue. All joints were simply held together for this short amount of time till set. The only joint we allowed a little more setting time for was the wingtip dihedral. We held these joints together temporarily with masking tape just as Kurt demonstrates and applied glue and propped the wingtips up to the correct dihedral angle and put a small weight (a 1"x2"x4" piece of wood) on the wing center section until the joint set for about five minutes. One tip dihedral is set and glued at a time. Then we carefully added four or five more drops of super glue along the joint.
All glue is applied with an applicator, not the bottle, the bottle usually allows the glue to flow too quickly and gets way too much on the joint. The "applicator" is simply a short stick of 1/4"x1/4"x4" balsa with two pins inserted through one end at very shallow angles (opposite each other) so that the points form a sort of a "pincer" that will pick up a drop of glue by capillary action from a bigger drop of glue sitting on a piece of wax paper.
Good luck and good flying,
Bjt4888
AMA member since 1972