If you are a shooter, you should be familiar with threadlocking compounds like Loctite. Recoil has a sneaky way of messing with fasteners on your gun. If you don’t want the fasteners to back out of your grip, scope mount, free float rail, Glock front sight, or any other critical part that has threads, then you need threadlocker.
Threadlocking compounds like Loctite are a necessary evil. On one hand, they save you time, money, headaches, and maybe even your bacon by prevent critical fasteners from failing. On the other hand, the same properties that help them penetrate threads on fasteners also help them leak out of their own container coating everything in your tool box with an oily, stinky, sticky mess… Not any more!
A good friend (thanks Publius) and long time reader of JTT turned up this gem and passed it along to me. Loctite is available in glue stick form! That’s right, the Loctite formulas that we all love are now available in an ultra-easy to deal with, no leak, semi-solid, glue stick form that Loctite calls QuickStix.
There are at least two formulas that you should have in your kit, Medium Strength Blue which is what you use for most applications and High Strength Red which is used less commonly. I haven’t found these locally but they are easily available online.
If you do a lot of shooting and a lot of your own gunsmithing, I hope this brightened your day as much as it brightened mine. You can tell I’m excited because I just wrote 5 paragraphs and more than 260 words about thread locker!
Glad to help spread the word. I’m not even sure how long this stick format has been available but I just discovered it on Amazon the other day. I cannot think of any reason to continue using the liquid form at this point. Ever. Even if you need to place threadlocker down into recessed threads (a hole) a toothpick with some of this compound on it should suffice. Goodbye old, and a big welcome to the new!
It has been on the market for at least the last 8 years. I have one in my drawer that I use off and on since then.
I think it is ok. They don’t offer it in low strength purple which is the color I use the most. And I feel that the liquid is just easier to use for most screws. I only use the stick when I am using hard to get in screws.
As a Journeyman Machine Repairman by trade, I been exposed to the stick version of the Blue and Red loctite thread locker QuickStix products for over 10 years. The Loctite rep that brought it into our plant said it was developed to stop TSA from confiscating the liquid version from service tech when they flew to job sights. I also have expressed interest with the rep that they bring out the purple version in a stick. Claims there is not enough volume to them to do it at that time. (read 10 years ago) Not going to happen.
One reason for using a liquid is if you need the green version. It’s for wicking into a pre-assembled fastener, such as an adjustment.