Everybody, working with older type tubes knows the problem, the sockets can get loose. Fixing this is not easy, because glass is hard to glue as you may know. The high glass temperate will make that any regular glue will soon break off again.

The best way to glue the tubes, is using original tube base glue. This is a mixture of pre-burned resin, and some minerals, also some grinded stone is in it. It must be solved in alcohol and then baked in an oven at 175 °C for 45 minutes. When done well, this will last a few decades, but after that get brittle and the socket gets loose. But... the disadvantage is, it cannot be used to glue historical tubes. The very old tubes may crack the glass when the tube is baked into an oven to cue the glue. Well there are ways to do it, but it stays difficult and it is not 100% safe with vintage tubes.

The problem: how do we repair those old tubes?

:( Two components glue. This will get loose soon, or worse it can cause a glass breakage after some months of storage. I don't know what causes the breakage, but I have seen it often, and don't use this any more. It can cause a nice round breakage and the whole glass bulb comes off. 

:( 10-seconds glue.  Mostly used to quickly repair a tube before selling it at Ebay.  You can almost say for sure, it will come off again. After a few arm up cycles it will not stick to the glass. Also any drips along the tube base can't be removed. So you may end up with a smeared tube base, and still the base is loose after some time.

The Solution:

We have developed glue that will repair the base permanently, without destroying the original glue compound inside the tube base. So the tube stays as original as can be, with no signs of the repair afterwards. There is no beed to desolder the wiring.

The used mixture is a result of many trials. The tube glue we have now, is based on three solvents (that mix!). One solvent will make the original tube glue weak, without actually solving it. Another solvent is used to solve the repair mass of the glue (the actual "glue"), and a third solvent is used for the glue base compound. The base compound makes the glue look milky and reasonably water solvable, which is convenient when you work with it. Also the base compound contains some very fine stone powder to fill small gaps. 

With this glue, you don't need to remove the socket. Any dirt between the base and the original old glue does not need to be removed. This glue will form a strong and flexible compound with any old residue. The Emission Labs repair glue contains natural resins that soak inside the old glue compound and rejunivates it. Like this the old glue can stay in place, and the base does not have to be removed. 

This picture shows how the Emission Labs repair glue forms a compound with the original glue. The original glue is the black particles that you see. They get weak again, and are soaked with the resin solution. NOTE, it is not normal to take off the socket; we just did so to look underneath, and see what happens. This is an old GECO rectifier tube, with almost no old glue left inside any more. Only showed here to demonstrate how the old glue is weakened again. When using the glue, you should leave the socket on.

Tube base glue after softening the original resin