Yesterday I was making a bamboo flute and I thought I’d try a lip plate. I made the plate (out of another piece of bamboo) and fit it to the tube, and then I glued it with superglue. As the glue started to run, I wiped it off. After a few minutes, I drilled a hole for the embouchure. As I shaped the hole, it smelled pretty bad and made my eyes tear. I looked at it and it seemed too deep, so I went over to my belt sander and sanded off about half of it. It still seemed too deep, so I sanded almost all of it off, and I played it. I ended up sanding the whole thing off and then I hand-sanded the superglue off, but I played it at various stages. Seemed fine, felt fine at the time, but within a hlaf hour, my bottom lip was (and still is) covered with blisters. Ugh!!
Methacrylate fumes are HORRIBLE. I’m assuming that the superglue was some kind of methylmethacrylate junk. Heating it (friction from the drill) would make it vaporize and could cause REAL problems.
So yeah, unless you’ve got a hazmat suit, Not Recommended. 
Hopefully the blisters will be better in a day or two. Oh, and I hope the new avatar isn’t meant to imply that your baby’s stuck to your bottom lip with residual superglue . . . I think that would constitute an emergency.
Stuart
Did you try removing it with acetone? It usually comes off easily.
Jessie, don’t listen to Glauber! You should never remove blisters on your lips with acetone. 
You should only pour it in your ears!!
Acetone removes babies?.. I must try it
Superglue isn’t really a glue, it’s a solvent that creates a chemical weld. It’s the right tool for re-gluing cracks where the pieces dovetail perfectly, and useful for little or nothing else.
And as you found out, it’s entirely the wrong thing for joining two pieces of material for the first time. I think the container prolly says something like “will not bridge gaps”. This is what they meant.
Hmm, I wonder if it’s possible you were allergic to the bamboo dust and not the supergle? Bamboo is a grass, and as such can cause serious reactions in some people (when pulverized into dust). I know you’ve made many bamboo instruments before, and have been exposed to the dust, but have you ever exposed your lips directly to so much of the stuff?
Oddly enough, while I have allergy problems with a number of woods, I’ve used superglue coated headjoints quite a bit over the last few years, and haven’t had a single problem, nor have I heard of any. I’ve also been exposed to far too much of the fumes from the stuff at Von Huene, but not heated, so who knows, perhaps that bit makes a difference…
Loren
Hi Jessie,
You might try T-88 epoxy, (Eilam found it…) I just got some from Rockler, great stuff for glueing wood and plastics.
http://www.rockler.com/findit.cfm?page=5337&sid=AFB96
I sometime use the heavy body “gap filling” super glue by Zap Glue, it can also be used with a kicker to harden quicker. It is nasty stuff though!
Jon
Jon, thanks for the suggestion and the flute plans! When I get around to getting a lathe, I’ll put them to use.
Hmm…bamboo dust. It’s an interesting idea, but yes, I have been exposed to it quite a lot and have never had a problem. I have always played the flutes at various stages. Superglue was the only new variable. It might not have been totally cured yet.
My musicianship is questionable, but I do have considerable experience w/ cyanoacrylate, aka CyA or Superglue. It is not a solvent but actually polymerizes into a bond. You can get it in several viscosities; the water-thin stuff is fine for bonding tight fitting parts or wicking into clean cracks in wood and the thicker stuff will fill gaps but takes longer to set up. If the thin stuff gets into the gaps between poorly fitted parts it will remain liquid for some time. CyA also requires a little bit of moisture to polymerize so it will set up slowly (if at all) in a very dry environment. Kicker is an accelerator that is useful for the thick stuff or in dry environments.
The fumes are irritating and toxic but it is unlikely that you will have a serious problem from a single application. Problems are more likely if you are, say, building large model aircraft in a basement (trust me on this). Apparently you had an allergic reaction, but if the glue had completely set up, i.e., polymerized, before you had started to work it then it would have been inert. For some reason, probably gaps between the parts, it was setting up very slowly.
IMHO, YMMV, etc., etc.
Roger
Thanks, Roger. That’s what I figured.
Cya for cyanoacrylate? I work for a large agency in which CYA is an acronym & refers to the paperwork covering one’s institutional backside. I think we stole the term from the U.S. Army, an organization known to
generate paperwork and acronyms liberally.