using super glue

hey so i was watching this short here and was wondering why he used supper glue on his fingers? does anyone do this as well? what are the benifits if there are any?

thanks
pat

I didn't watch it, but I superglue the splits in my fingers. Those suckers are painful, especially climbing inside during winter!!!

Can't watch that video at work, so no idea what he's doing, but I use superglue to repair my fingers. Split tips are the big one. Lots of crimping on sharp crystals makes my fingertips split like a team of chinese gymnasts.

I pull the split apart, squirt a bit of glue in/around the break, and then push the skin together for 60 seconds till its all dry.

Caveat emptor: Some brands of superglue are carcinogenic (they cause cancer. for serious) so be careful what brand you buy. The best is Dermabond, but that's mostly available to ER docs only.

Our dermatologist recommended Krazy Glue or Super Glue. Be sure to wash out the crack/split thoroughly before applying the glue, and don't use for larger areas like scrapes.

D Winger wrote:Our dermatologist recommended Krazy Glue or Super Glue. Be sure to wash out the crack/split thoroughly before applying the glue, and don't use for larger areas like scrapes.

This is probably a dumb question as you are clearly not dead, but isn't super glue really caustic? Like poisonous?

Looks like he may be gluing a cut or crack he got from one of those pockets on the climb. Quite a few people use super-glue to hold on flappers or close cuts/cracks, works pretty well for an hour or so until you open the cut again.

Some people also use it when the fingernail starts seperating from the nail-bed. If you have generally short fingernails, a lot of mileage will do this and it's wicked painful.

I thought this thread was going to be about applying super glue to your finger tips just before a really hard move to get that extra stickyness.

In the vid he's using the superglue as a base to keep the tape on. I've watched people basically superglue tape to their hands to keep it from peeling off, especially on something like the sharp edges of limestone pockets in the video.
It works well but I wouldn't recommend using this trick to close a split or a flapper unless you're really desperate to keep climbing since getting the tape off after the fact isn't trivial.

Personally for the split tips during the winter I prefer using tincture of benzoine. Though my problem is that usually my finger nails start to pull away from the underlying skin so I don't get the gnarly splits in the tips and along the sides of the nail that a lot of people deal with. The benzoine is basically a weaker version of superglue, it's not as strong but it's also much less viscous and goes on in a thinner coat that doesn't peel off in chunks but wears off with the skin. It works well for under the nails since it's so watery that it wicks under and around the nail, it also is heavy enough that you can get about an extra day out of your tips if you're climbing somewhere like Smith on little edges.

Maybe a little longer than needed but man I know how crappy winter can be on the hands and how painful it can make climbing.
Thankfully spring is here,
BA

and Will is right on, when you get a good separation of the nail and the bed it freak'n hurts.

Alicia Sokolowski wrote: This is probably a dumb question as you are clearly not dead, but isn't super glue really caustic? Like poisonous?

Certainly in as much as overhydrating will give you water poisoning.

It's been used for decades to buy time in dealing with major bleeds. The store bought & medical grade both contain cyanide which is hostile to bacteria but you won't use enough in amount to severely necrose or kill your skin tissue, unless you dump a ridiculous amount in. The medical grade comes with a-biotics and costs about 300 bucks; not that neosporin doesn't also have some a-biotics for both bacterial cell types, notwithstanding the potential allergic reaction.

The two main dangers are exothermic reaction causing a burn, which can be exacerbated with cotton bandaging (the hydroxl groups in cotton which effect polymerization of the glue); and closing the skin of a fully penetrating wound creating an anaerobic environment for certain bacteria that entered the wound and favor this situation (like an endosporing tetani -- tetanus).

It seems to me most painful injuries discussed here don't really go very deep, baseball pitchers do it also for fingertip splits/pain. If the wound is deep enough though, you want it openly bandaged and dealt with clinically.

Thanks to the above 2 posters for the good info. I had always wondered about that, even while I was applying it to finger cuts.

Edited b/c I accidentally left the 'T' out of the word 'posters', which instead made the word 'posers' lol.

I actually had super glue get flicked into my eye. Not on purpose. While extremely annoying, it sorts itself out. The next day it was gone and the eye was none the worse for wear. Well as far as I know it isn't.

Super Glue is nearly the same as medical grade "skin glues" like Dermabond. In fact, several of my medical friends have often called Dermabond et al "really marked up super glue"

It's not exactly the same but I use it (Super Glue etc) in small doses to patch finger tips or protect tips from really sharp holds.

Alicia Sokolowski wrote: This is probably a dumb question as you are clearly not dead, but isn't super glue really caustic? Like poisonous?

'Caustic' are substances like strong acids and bases that eat through stuff.

Super glue may well be poisonous, but only if directly ingested. Method of exposure counts when dealing with toxins - great example is Visine. Although you can drop it in your eye all day, Visine is actually very, very toxic if ingested. (In reality, the prank shown in Wedding Crashers would have probably ended up a homicide.)

Super Glue is great for road trips. I apply a thin line across the top of the nail bed before I start the trip. If I'm really concientous, I'll work the nail back and forth a bit so the glue gets at the base of the nail bed and nail and then hold the nail pressed to the finger until dry. Typically though I'm too lazy for that and just line and go. This really helps with the painful nail seperation mentioned above. If I do get a seperation then I'll spend the time to work it over a bit more. As already said, great on cuts, hang nails and those painful dry cracks.

Repeat as necessary. Depending on the type of climbing it will last from a couple of days to many. Obviously more useful on face/sport.

One caveat, it will leave your fingers looking a bit odd or dirty until it wears off so if you're in the business of being a hand model...

patrick donahue wrote:hey so i was watching this short here and was wondering why he used supper glue on his fingers? does anyone do this as well? what are the benifits if there are any? thanks pat

Not trying to shed doubt on his redpoint, but when I watched the video sometimes the superglued tape is on and sometimes it is off. They must have done different takes for the close-ups or something??

But yeah, I use super glue or crazy glue (whichever is cheaper at the time) for splits or when finger nails get worn painfully low... Seems silly to take rest days if your only injury is one bleeding fingernail. Usually one squirt of glue and it covers the nerves enough to feel fine... or maybe it just kills the nerves?

Super glue is also used to layer up raw finger tips, if you've been climbing for several days on crimps and you don't have any skin left on your fingertips.

mattm wrote:Super Glue is nearly the same as medical grade "skin glues" like Dermabond. In fact, several of my medical friends have often called Dermabond et al "really marked up super glue" It's not exactly the same but I use it (Super Glue etc) in small doses to patch finger tips or protect tips from really sharp holds.

Aside from bacterial physical and chemical barriers, the medical grade is improved upon so as to abate inflammation and has a better plasticizing effects to move as with surrounding tissue; making it more suited to quickly seal for larger damaged/cut areas; which is appropriate in a clinical application.

Dana wrote: A previous poster mentioned that these glues contain cyanide. Are you sure about that?

The glues do not contain cyanide. Cyanide is an ion of carbon and nitrogen (CN- is the formula). Rather the glues are cyano-acrylate resins. These are not ionic and not in the same league toxicologically as the CN ion.

Yes, while we aren't talking about a freely dissociative crystalloid like NaCN or KCN as examples; there may be something involved with the CN of the glue that is interfering with a prokaryotic cell that is different than our cell tissue.

Possibly in peptidoglycan synthesis of the cell wall and the enzymes a cell uses to bring materials back through its membrane, which is also an anti-biotic function, or similar to it -- maybe more to creating a hostile chemical environment that the cell can't enjoy as if it tries to break down the glue with its enzymes, the CN would move into the cell.

I use it on the nasty cracks on my heels. It's the only thing I've found that helps stop the pain - every step gets to be agony when the cracks get deep!