This One Goes Out To The Ladies
*or* How to Neatly Get Great Stuff Out of Its Can Without an Applicator
[cpg_imagefixthumb:145]A few months ago I picked up a two pack of Great Stuff expanding foam insulation. I needed the first can when I bought it so the other can sat on a shelf in our storeroom until today. I’d decided to finally fill in the gaps around the window in our bathroom. So I got the can, shook it up and was about to put the applicator/handle on when I noticed that it wasn’t assembled. It’s supposed to come assembled. In other words - it was broken, damn - now what. I didn’t want to run out to the store to get another can just for another applicator.
That leaves just one option, trying to fix it myself. I tried gluing it using the only adhesive I had. Crazy-super-extra-hold-tight-glue-stuff (you know, the generic stuff), it didn’t work, I held it together for several minutes and it fell apart as soon as I removed pressure. So either the glue’s bad (it is an old tube) or whatever plastic they used for the applicator is some sort of polymer that resists chemical adhesion (well I guess it would be, after all Great Stuff doesn’t exactly stick to the applicator and it does a great job at sticking to my skin).
Well now what… Time to improvise! I looked around for a properly sized tube of some sort, preferably with a handy bend in it. Then I remembered, we have bendy straws in the kitchen! Woohoo - what can’t bendy straws do!
[cpg_imagefixthumb:144][cpg_imagefixthumb:143]I checked the size of the straw against the size of the threaded tube coming out of the can. The straw was just a little too small, That’s easily fixed I used a knife and a pair of scissors as augers to stretch out the end of the straw so that I could fit it on the can. Unfortunately this process twisted the straw a few times and made the straw too weak to press down onto the can’s tube without bending the straw (making the situation worse) or squirting some stuff out. I could have tried another straw (after all I had a whole pack to work with), but something told me I’d be going through quite a few straws before I got one that worked. Or worse yet, I wouldn’t get one that worked.
Hmmm… What to do? Actually, my wife had the solution. She handed me a green tube, which was very stiff and just a hundredth of an inch or so larger than the straw. My wife being sometimes the helpful sort, but more often than not the tortuous sort (she knows this, and seems to be just fine with it) told me with a smile that this tube was from a tampon.
Yikes… Well - I guess that works too…
[cpg_imagefixthumb:142]So I slid the green tube over the straw. Then, I carefully slid the straw onto the the can’s threaded tube. Carefully because Great Stuff is, well, great stuff, but it takes forever to clean off your skin and I really didn’t want it spraying out of the can while I was trying to put something that doesn’t quite fit onto it. [cpg_imagefixthumb:141]I then slid the green tube down the straw and over the can’s tube. This gave me an extra tight fit and enough rigidity to use the straw as the applicator. I then went to work on the window. I pressed on the can’s tube to start the flow, it hissed and the stuff started to flow! The tampon tube/straw combo worked! Thanks to the tampon tube it didn’t pop off right away and [cpg_imagefixthumb:146]the straw didn’t bend when I put pressure on it. The straw did pop off once when the can was nearly empty, but this was because I was pressing on the can’s tube where the straw was fitted to it, and I pushed it off - I was able to put it back on and continue.
So there you have it. If you loose the applicator or it breaks, you can always grab a tampon applicator and go.. to… town… Ahem, yeah.
