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Lest anyone say that i mince words, let me be plain when i say that i love superglue. While i find it less than ideal for most household repairs, the biggest problem with handling it turns into its biggest advantage: BONDS SKIN INSTANTLY.

See, it was developed accidently in WWII while trying to make synthetic gun signs (replacing spider silk). Turns out it was a first-class son of a bitch to handle because it stuck to everything. It got used in Vietnam to stop bleeding on the battlefield. Cyanoacrylate is more-or-less an acrylic resin that rapidly polymerizes into very long (and strong) chains. It is used widely because of its wonderful properties, such as:

• bonds fast, on the order of minutes and fully cures in an hour or so
• polymerization starts when the resin is exposed to moisture. this alone makes it nearly ideal to closing wounds, and in fact, some blood on the skin makes it bond faster than if not.
• waterproof bond when cured – once it cures, it completely stops bleeding
• dirt cheap. a four pack of tubes can be had for about two dollars.
• bonds well to non-porous surfaces

i keep a tube of superglue at work, at home and i try to keep a tube in my bag. Why?

Christmas of 2003, The Girl and i were puttering around her Wicker Park apartment, cooking up a feast that would feed us for days. I took the trash out and being the native son of The South that i am, i didn’t bother to put on shoes to walk twenty feet in the snow, toss a bag over the fence and into the garbage can and walk back. Unfortunately under the four inches of fresh snow was the bottom third of a broken bottle, which summarily embedded itself nearly an inch into my foot. I hobbled back inside, bleeding all on the rug. Having been a Boy Scout (2 required merit badges away from Eagle, thank you kindly), i immediately sprang into action by cleaning the wound, elevating it and applying pressure to quell the bleeding.

Once it was clean, high and dry, i started thinking about going to the hospital. The emergency room is an awful place to go and would take up most of what was left of the day. Dinner was halfway done and would have to be left in limbo for the cats to devour. The cut was fairly clean, didn’t sever any major blood vessels or touch bone, so i figured “why not just superglue it closed and go to the hospital later?” – i’m no dummy. If my foot wasn’t better in a day or so, i’d limp off to the emergency room. So while holding the wound closed, i put a few small drops of superglue on it to hold it closed. Once those dried, i ran a thin bead of glue along the cut and let it all dry solid.

Turns out that’s all i needed to hold the cut closed and let my foot heal. The glue would flake off every day or so, and i’d let it stay that way overnight, then reglue it in the morning. My foot healed fine with almost no scar at all. Turns out the main difference between fifty cent superglue and ten dollar tissue glue is the carrier alcohol. For external use, it doesn’t matter too much.

Cyanoacrylate is damn near perfect for minor incidental cuts, like hangnails or paper cuts. It will stop the bleeding, hold the wound closed and provide a semi-rigid barrier so you won’t keep bashing stuff into it and re-opening that wound.