Delta Quick Steel Repair and Retain – A Paste Repair for Metal Parts

It does still seem strange to me that carbon fibre is used to make Formula 1 cars and wings for jet liners – somehow the materials just don’t fit. But clearly they do. Having examined a Formula 1 car close up and then seen how strong they are in televised crashes where the driver walks away from a 150 mile an hour pile-up, I have no grounds to be sceptical.

However, when presented with a plastic canister of Delta Quick Steel my scepticism was once again awakened – how could a silver-looking viscous liquid be used for retaining and repairing worn metal parts – even on working machines.

The Quick Steel is presented in a plastic container that has a hard outer body and a squeezy telescopic inner lining. The compound inside is delivered via a small plastic spout with a tip that is cut off to suit the size of the amount you want to squeeze out. This in turn is covered by a white cover that no doubt helps to keeps a bit of a seal on the contents for some kind of shelf life.

The liquid itself seems a lot like a thick but viscous steel – with what looks like particles of steel in it. To quote the blurb – “Quick Steel Adhesive is an anaerobic adhesive which is designed to retain close fitting metal parts which have signs of wear.”

In my mind this means that the adhesive has some body that is designed to harden fully when it is used to fill the small scores and lines that sometimes mean that bearings or keys can’t be retained in place. It is quite unlike the “normal” adhesives that we would use to join things, in that the Quick Steel needs to be in a closed anaerobic environment adjacent to the steel which it is meant to replace. So it is the case that the user might have to be very careful where the Quick Steel is put so that it repairs rather than clogs. Clearly there is also a limit to its usage in the sense that it would hardly be used to rebuild the end of a stub gear shaft, for example.

In terms of marketing niche, I think the users of this product will largely be the skilled and resourceful owners of vintage machines, cars, bikes etc and backyard mechanics who love old machines and need a way to compensate for the inevitable wear and tear that these old machines show. It may be the last throw of the dice before, eventually, the part has to be very expensively milled from scratch.
I had to scratch my head for a while to find a suitable test situation for the Quick Steel. I confess that any machines I use that break down, are usually repaired with replacement parts or recycled. However, I was keen to fix a slipping keyway on an electric motor I use to power a polishing mop. I applied the Quick steel, set the key and drive wheel, wiped off the excess and stood back to let the adhesive do its work. I did check a couple of times to find that the Quick Steel was going off quite slowly – no doubt due to the fact that it has been the coldest week of winter in Sussex so far. By moving it to a slightly warmer environment I speeded up the process (an accelerator is available) – the result that I got was very pleasing – the key firmly held in place and no rattling drive wheel when I switched the power on. Very useful stuff in my view.