Glue Guns and Epoxy
For the past few years, I have been using a cheap little hot
glue gun. It works but it produces hot glue very slowly.
This becomes a problem when you want to glue something large
because the first area you apply the glue to will already have
hardened by the time you finish applying glue to the whole surface.
I went to my local hardware store and bought their most powerful
hot glue gun, marked "50 Watts". It still didn't seem very
powerful and it seemed like a 60-watt lightbulb puts out a lot
more heat than the glue gun. So I measured the power consumption
of the "50 Watts" glue gun and found that it is only 24 watts, and
returned it to the hardware store. I exchanged it for a
Black and Decker model #260-04 glue gun, which is marked as
"160 Watts". I measured 162 watts. Needless to say, it melts
glue very well. The cheap one that I had been using that was marked
"10 Watts" turns out to use 4.7 watts. The moral of the story is, ...
I like hot glue for lots of things. It is extremely convenient. But
it isn't very strong. When I need a strong glue bond, I usually use
epoxy. There is a wide range of epoxies available, and I keep a few
different kinds. In my part of the world, hardware stores carry a
certain set of epoxy products and auto parts stores have some different
products. Wood glue works really well on wood and is much cheaper than
epoxy. When I'm gluing large wood things, I use wood glue unless I'm
in a hurry, in which case I'll use epoxy. Some people say that epoxy is
a hassle because you have to mix the two parts. I disagree. Regular
glue ages and/or dries out. Epoxy doesn't seem to get bad after any
about of time. Containers of regular glue get stuck shut. This never
happens with epoxy.
it takes pliers Epoxy works well on w