Now here’s a blog that will keep you glued to your seat. This was kind of a sticky wicket, but I stuck with it and and now going to stick it to you. Okay, can you guess that I may be talking about glues?

  Yes here is the adhesive report. I am amazed at the number of different glues we sell, the many uses they have, the differences in how and what they stick together and just how cool some of them are. Glues, cool? Remember, I am a hardware geek.

   Take super glue. A simple tube of gooey substance that will stick so many things together. Chemists call it cyanoacrylate glue. You can see why the marketing dept took over in the naming of this glue. This glue was discovered in 1951 at Eastman Kodak’s Kingsport Tennesee plant by Dr. Harry Coover and Dr. Fred Joyner. The two were trying to determine how much light was refracted by a piece of ethyl cyanoacrylate film. They couldn’t get the film out of their refractor, concluded they had ruined an expensive piece of equipment and discovered a new adhesive. In 1958 Eastman 910, their name for the new glue hit the market. Kodak concentrated on their other products and the super glue was sold off to other companies. It wasn’t until the mide seventies when the famous guy hanging from his hardhat ad on tv really made the market for super glues soar.

Most glues work like Velcro on the atomic level, but not super glue. According to Vince Staten, no one really knows exactly how it holds things together. Super glue requires a thin film to work and works well with two very smooth matched surfaces. Other glues do a good job of filling voids between objects and holding them together. Goop is a good example of this. It looks like a silicone caulk, but is a very strong bonding glue. There are many varieties of Goop, but as the manufacturer told me years ago, it all comes from the same source, just the packaging is different. Ahh marketing!
When it comes to marketing, I’m not certain that I’ve ever seen a merketing campaign greater than Gorilla Glue’s. This is a polyurethane glue that has many uses, and yes, it is strong stuff, and yes it works. However, we have three similar glues on our shelf that work just as well, it’s just that they don’t have the mega-bucks advertising behind them to make everyone belive they’re the best glue ever. That’s the power of advertising for you!

How about Liquid Nails for an adhesive that’s been around for a long time, with a long proven good record. Contact cement, rubber cement, fabric glue, white glue, wood glue, spray-on adhesive, waterproof silicone adhesive, adhesive caulk, pvc cement, adhesive for plastics & glass, weatherstrip adhesive, hot glue guns, we’ve got them all. Perhaps the hardest part of gluing something is deciding what glue to use, there are so many these days.

My favorite glue? Epoxies, hands down. I have fixed so many things with epoxies that I thought were un-fixable I can’t believe it. I think the two part method proves it. It’s like the old joke - I’ve just invented a glue that will bond anything to anything, except I can’t get the lid off the jar. That’s what I think of epoxies, they’ll glue anything to anything, they’re specialized for many surfaces, they even come in putty form. They’re so strong you cannot mix the two chemicals together until you’re just ready to bond, then glue it, and it’s not coming apart. this includes two of the adhesive worlds best products, JB Weld and PC-7. If you can’t fix it with an epoxy glue, cement or putty, then it’s time to get a new one.

Some things to think about next time you have to glue things together.

-Clark

(What no Bond, Adhesive Bond jokes? No, 007 brand bonding agent jokes? Sorry, it just would have been to corny)