Best glue to adhere plastic to MDF or plywood?

[Joel Griffies]

Building a lego/duplo table for my son and curious if anyone has a recommendations on waht glus woud be best to adhere the plastic baseplates to a MDF or plywood substrate. Not sure if Titebond will hold it and a little concerned about something like Gorilla glue expanding and making the plates uneven.

Thanks to anyone who has dealt with this before!

Joel

[Jamie Buxton]

Gluing plastic is tricky. Can you use screws?

[Bruce Darrow]

From one who has been there and done that:

Use an adhesive caulk. Phenoseal or Geocell. On a horizontal application like a Lego table, either should do the trick. I've never found anything that works particularly well on a vertical application.

Apply liberally, staying away from the tile edges, so as to avoid squeeze-out, and weight each tile until the caulk cures.

Good luck!

[Jim O'Dell]

Would contact cement work? I'd scuff the back side of each piece with some heavy grit sandpaper, then coat it and the surface of choice. Probably 2 coats, then place the squares down and use a J roller on them. Jim.

[Mike Konobeck]

http://www.joewoodworker.com/veneering/substrates.htm

Joe recommends epoxy. I have a project coming up where I want to apply wood veneer on plexiglass. Want the light to shine through the highly figured veneer but of course the glue has to be perfectly clear and consistent so I was thinkng of trying epoxy. There was a Wood magazine article with a lamp that did this same thing and I believe they used contact cement. Since the kids will be pretty hard on the table I would definitely use the strongest adhesive you can find. The other option is to route a shallow recess and leave the boards loose so the kids can swap out the boards for different themes like the street ones. You could build a secondary top that sits in the recess so if the kids want to use the table for something else they just pop the top on and you have a dual funtion table.

[scott vroom]

Weldwood Contact Cement applied with a short nap roller

[Larry Edgerton]

Just guessing as I have never glued Legos, but the first two I would test would be epoxy and Kangaroo glue. Roo glue may work and would be the easiest of the two to deal with.

Have fun with it, Larry

[Jerry Bruette]

Clear silicone RTV has some awesome holding power. We use silicone at work for sealing covers on gear reducers and they usually have to be chiseled apart.

[Kent A Bathurst]

FWIW.......reference info for gluing different materials. Cannot vouch for accuracy, but they back up Scott on this one...........

http://www.thistothat.com/

[Chris Fournier]

Try methyline chloride, sometimes called Weldon 3, 4, 5, 6 etc.

[Jay Jeffery]

Legos are made with ABS plastic, so it should glue pretty well. If it were polyehthylene or polypropylene, you would mot have any good options. I'd just use some construction adhesive (like liquid nails), but there is a variety of adhesives that would work.

[Mike Lysov]

I do not know if CA glue is ok for plastic to wood but as far as I know it seems to be the best glue ever that works with a lot of material including plastic and wood.

It is recommended to be used with accelerator to reduce curing time to less than a minute but I have just found out that you can use just baking soda to accelerate curing. To see how strong this glue is have a look at this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMyHrYIeN2Y or just goggle for CA(Cyanoacrylate) glue.

[Myk Rian]

and a little concerned about something like Gorilla glue expanding and making the plates uneven.
Put weight on top of them until the glue has set.

[loren forney]

Be careful gluing plastic with CA and baking soda. The reaction is exothermic in the extreme and will melt the plastic. Don't let the "smoke" get near your eyes as you will tear up and is quite painful. A crust from the baking soda forms a rock hard build up that will have to be broken away if you need to get rid of it.

Now the good news. If you ever need instant cure with CA then baking soda is the way to go. Especially for fillets. Rub baking soda between thumb and finger onto joint, place the CA and the bond is instant.

[Brad Cambell]

http://www.bsi-inc.com/Pages/hobby/ca.html

At last, something I know about that I can help with. This stuff will bond anything!! I use this for high power rocketry. I will routinely pull over 30 gs.

I keep thin and thick CA on hand for any occasion.