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Jay Selway
01-15-2015, 2:08 PM
Anybody got any pointers or recommendations on how to adhere acrylic to wood? Basically want to do a back lit sign, that's wood, with acrylic letters that are flush mounted.

Thanks in advance.

Jay Selway
01-15-2015, 2:13 PM
Doing a little searching, it seems like regular epoxy is the way to go. My question is since the acrylic and wood won't be face to face, but rather edge to edge - will the epoxy create a strong enough bond?

The wood is a 1/4 MDF core ply.

Ross Moshinsky
01-15-2015, 5:34 PM
More details would be helpful.

Studs are probably the most common way of mounting a halo letter. I'd consider 3M double sided tape as an option too if the letters aren't too large.

Lee DeRaud
01-15-2015, 6:41 PM
Doing a little searching, it seems like regular epoxy is the way to go. My question is since the acrylic and wood won't be face to face, but rather edge to edge - will the epoxy create a strong enough bond?

The wood is a 1/4 MDF core ply.Ah, for some arbitrarily low value of "wood". :D

If I'm getting the right image in my head, you're going to have holes in the plywood (in this case shaped like letters), filled with "inlaid" pieces of translucent/transparent acrylic the same thickness, right? Given that it's ply/MDF and won't move around like real wood would, the epoxy will work fine from an adhesive standpoint, but sounds like a total PITA during assembly. (I'd normally use silicone sealer for acrylic-to-wood, but it wouldn't be much easier to deal with in this application.)

Depending on the overall size and durability constraints, I'd think about gluing a thin backer of clear acrylic to the back of the plywood after it's cut...couple dots of silicone sealer would do the job. Then just use regular plastic cement/solvent to glue the letters to that. The nice part is, you can replace the wood part later if necessary without redoing the whole thing.

Jay Selway
01-15-2015, 9:32 PM
Great idea. Thanks!