Hot Melt Glue

[Tom Bender]

I never liked hot melt glue,,,until I tried it. Pretty handy stuff. A friend was moving to a smaller place and gave me a kit.

[Daniel Dioguardi]

I broke down and purchased one of those high output hot glue guns a while back, and bought glue formulated for woodworking. It is light years ahead of the old tiny hot glue gun I had.
I have found great uses for it that have saved me tons of time as I go - mostly using it when flattening wide boards that won’t fit on my jointer or tryingvto maximize yield with my Alaskan mill - I highly recommend that people add one to their toolkit - lots of McGyver moments available with that thing

[Thomas McCurnin]

I use it weekly (no kidding). I make custom cardboard boxes to store some tools and jigs and it is great. I also use it for temporarily attaching drawer faces and temporary hold downs. I know some like super glue and painters tape for that too.

I do wear gloves, because the stuff is hot!

[Osvaldo Cristo]

[...]

I do wear gloves, because the stuff is hot!

I fully agree. Last Saturday I got some of it on my mid finger from my left hand. OMG!

I purchased my hot gun on 1992 from B&D. It was made in the US. The glue was made in Canada. I purchased a full box I use up to now. It is a handy tool to have near by.

[Eric Arnsdorff]

Thomas - post some pics of your storage! I haven't utilized all my wife's orders from Amazon (ok and all my shop tool orders) cardboard shipping containers for storage.
I like my cordless Ryobi hot glue gun! I know it's not a Festool but dang it works great!


I use it weekly (no kidding). I make custom cardboard boxes to store some tools and jigs and it is great. I also use it for temporarily attaching drawer faces and temporary hold downs. I know some like super glue and painters tape for that too.

I do wear gloves, because the stuff is hot!

[Stan Calow]

I use to attach brown paper dust protection to the backs of picture frames.

[Mark Bolton]

I do wear gloves, because the stuff is hot!

Odd timing,.. we have a couple high output stick feed guns and run long sticks. Guy in the shop knocked it off his bench and it just happened to land on the stick with the tip pointing up/at him. Ripping hot glue shot from the floor up on to his forearm and bicep area leaving a bunch of small but pretty nasty burns. Wouldnt happen with a lower end gun but the more production guns, especially if they sit for just a few minutes and the glue in the chamber gets blistering hot are, well, blisteringly hot.

[Frank Pratt]

And the worst thing about it is that it doesn't just drip back off, but sticks around to give all its heat to that tender flesh.

[Mark Bolton]

And the worst thing about it is that it doesn't just drip back off, but sticks around to give all its heat to that tender flesh.

Yep, and once it cools you get the joy of peeling it off ripe burned skin. I was just glad it didnt hit him in the face.

[Keith Outten]

Are you talking about a glue gun with an electric feed?

The hand squeeze models are all I have even seen. I am way behind the times :)

[Mark Bolton]

Are you talking about a glue gun with an electric feed?

The hand squeeze models are all I have even seen. I am way behind the times :)

No these are still trigger/hand feed. Pulls the stick in with each pull of the trigger like a caulking gun. But if you shove the stick manually, or bang it against something.... So when the gun hit the floor with all the weight of the gun landing on the stick it shot molten glue out the tip. This is a gun from hotmelt.com and it runs way hotter than any 300w gun Ive ever had. The glue is often times bubbling hot.

[Keith Outten]

Darn, I was looking forward to owning a power feed glue gun. Probably for the best I would most likely waste a lot of glue with a power feed :)

[Jim Becker]

Darn, I was looking forward to owning a power feed glue gun. Probably for the best I would most likely waste a lot of glue with a power feed :)

I would imagine that with some practice (and assuming the gun has some level of control at the trigger) one might get to the point that waste was minimal and still benefit from not getting a sore wrist. My old thing is hand-fed, but I rarely use it.

[Mark Bolton]

Darn, I was looking forward to owning a power feed glue gun. Probably for the best I would most likely waste a lot of glue with a power feed :)

I had seen an electric feed gun that was like $300 bucks. Perhaps a bit more than I would ever need to spend though these are like $100+ a pop. If your running one a lot it would make sense. No idea if they are variable speed on the trigger or some dial-adjust, or just on/off.

[Tom Bender]

It was handy to attach these temporary clamping blocks.

441427

[James Spillman]

I'm curious to know some of the ways hot melt glue is being used in the workshop. Also, what about cleanup?

[Walter Plummer]

We use one of these at work for packaging. Air and electric. Sticks are 1" Dia. x 3" long. Pumps a lot of glue. 441452

[Mark Bolton]

I'm curious to know some of the ways hot melt glue is being used in the workshop. Also, what about cleanup?

We use a lot of hotmelt on commercial cabs, melamine, particleboard, etc., using wood forumulated sticks. Pretty much never on solids other than for work holding or temporary fixture type stuff. Cleanup is with a chisel but you dont want to get it on any solid wood that will be receiving finish because it can penetrate deep enough to leave a stain youll never get out.

[Mark Bolton]

We use one of these at work for packaging. Air and electric. Sticks are 1" Dia. x 3" long. Pumps a lot of glue. 441452

Thats similar to the electric feed gun I had mentioned earlier that used glue slugs.

[Winston Chang]

When I use hot glue to temporarily hold two things together and I don’t want any residue left on them, I’ll first put masking tape on the objects, then put glue on the tape, and stick them together. After I’m done, I pull them apart and remove the tape.

[Daniel Dioguardi]

I'm curious to know some of the ways hot melt glue is being used in the workshop. Also, what about cleanup?

In the last two weeks I've used it to mount wide & long boards to a flat piece of melamine to pass through the planer to get a flat face - it scraped right off of the melamine and was machined off of the other face of the board I was working on. For the same oversized boards, I needed a straight edge and was able to use the same method to run them through the table saw - they were too long (80") for the jig I usually use that has dovetail clamps to hold down the piece, and too long to feel good about using my jointer (I'd have to move the jointer to get that much before/aft space, and rig up a bunch of infeed/outfeed support for multiple passes - using the table saw made it easy).

I also used it to hold a template in place to route a profile because I forgot to get more carpet tape the last time I ran out. I used blue tape to keep it off of my work piece.

I was slabbing a sweet spalted log and wanted to just take a tiny bit off on the first cut, so I didn't want to waste thickness by trying to miss the screws I usually use, so I hot glued a wide cedar 2x8 on the top to run the mill down for the first cut - was able to minimize waste and it was easy as pie. It helps to have a decent glue gun that can put out glue quickly.

I have recently seen some black glue sticks that are marketed as sandable that can be used to fill voids super fast.. going to get a few and see how they work - that would be a huge time saver from epoxy - need to research this for myself to see how good it looks after finish, etc..

It is just another tool to solve the weird problems that come up every so often in the shop - I love being able to solve my own problems.