CA Glues, 2 Part Epoxies, and Contact Adhesives, A few things to help choose the right one for you

[Music] all right everybody so as you can see I have a number of different kinds of relatively quick adhering glues here um I've got some two-part epoxy then I've got various kinds of super glue or CA glues now you know super glue is the brand CA glue is the kind of glue that it is um they call it instant CA adhesion or adhesive a lot of times as well so you've got that and I've got black here for not fills I've got the um can't remember this one's medium thick and thin and then I've got two starbon kits here and the starbon kits are actually thin um and they come with adhesive as well these were on sale on Amazon this kit here these and the not fillers the black ones plus the not the jvw but plus these activators I got from um Rockler and I paid for all this myself so I did not I'm not sponsored by anybody then this is a clear uh they call it clear grip it's a general um adhesive it's flexible and paintable um they always say it holds in second but um we're going to talk about that here in a minute and it is clear and this is a contact of adhesive so let's talk about what these terms mean a little bit as far as you know I'm I'm not going into the the scientific definitions because honestly I've read those and they do very little bit for me to understand the differences in them um contact adhesive is going to be more malleable little bit more flimsy and it's not going to sand well in it as a general rule um when you're working on a project so it's going to be something that's going to be hidden as a general rule it seems to take a little bit longer for it to adhere and and become bonded than the ca glues do or the epoxies the epoxies for instance they have a 5 minute um set time and then they are uh what does it say for um I can't remember what it says for actual hold time I want to say 24 hours but it is you know it's a relatively quick set time um for curing and being able to be workable CA glues as well you can accelerate the good thing about CA is you can accelerate them now to be fair with epoxies that are two parts if you put hard more hardener you can actually Harden it a little bit faster but you can only push that so far before the mix is so out of whack that it doesn't work right and it will never actually Harden or cure the way it should um so keep that in mind you you can push those numbers a little bit by mixing a little bit more of hardener than of um the uh resin but only to a level without it becoming an issue whereas CA glues you can um apply activator to either the glue after it's been attached so you'll see some people take CA glue and you'll they'll put it on a piece they'll Stick it to something and spray the activator or the accelerant on the the piece once it's stuck together some people will spray like Part B and put the glue on part A and then stick it together um I've seen debates on which is the best I I have not found it to be super different in in any case um it would probably be determined on how you're going to uh how big of a surface for instance you're going to do like if you're going to put a lot of glue you might want to put the accelerant on a the back side of a different piece and then lay it on there versus like if you put it down there and then spray the edges you're only hardening the edges that might come out a little bit and it does have to have actual contact with the glue itself for it to activate the glue which makes sense so like if you had a panel so like for instance this panel here if I was to adhere it to this one and none of the glue is squeezing out if I put all the glue on the back of this panel here stuck it to there and then spray activator around the edges it wouldn't do anything it wouldn't activate anything because there's no glue coming out around the edges so make sure the activator can be in direct contact with the glue um I did buy this stuff because I I do build these these are my custom pieces of art this is just one example I have multiples um and I used super glue or CA glue I should better say on on these um and that's where I started buying multiple thicknesses thin is really runny so it's you know if you have a really small piece and you put thin on there it might run off and drip out and run around the edges but it will tend to adhere just a little bit faster whereas medium I find is better for like slightly larger pieces that um aren't super heavy but have a little bit more surface area and I can kind of push it on there and squeeze but you do have to if you're not using accelerate you do have to or activator you do have to hold it longer okay so keep that in mind and then thick of course um will hold a little bit heavier stuff as as a general rule and you do have to hold it a little bit longer if you're not using activator but you can put a little bit more kind of Squish it on and you do have to hold it there longer if once again not using activator activator is pretty expensive so I don't always use activator that's why I buy the different thicknesses of um CA glues uh epoxy is super awesome for like heavy pieces in fact I used epoxy attaching this panel here to this piece of wood here but you have to like lay it down and or have it clamped somehow and so it doesn't run because if you put um epoxy a two-part epoxy on here the weight of it will shift it downwards unless you stabilize it some way or you can lay it on its back or whatnot so you know I'm using like painter tape or clamps or something will help keep that in place and it will be a stronger Bond as a general as a general application for volume and it's more affordable I should mention for larger heavier areas now technically could I have used a CA glue on all of this yeah I could nothing here is so heavy CA glue wouldn't you know work for that um the two-part epoxy also they I don't know they seem and and somebody's going to dispute this and that's fine they seem to actually um Harden and be sandable a little bit better in my opinion than large volumes of CA glue um I've heard people say that they you seeag glue and they don't have a problem with it um maybe it depends on how fine of a finish you go because a lot of guys that are using CA glues and stuff like that to fill the void are doing like epoxy resin pores and they're going up to like you know times a thousand grit or whatever so maybe if you're going that high it would um work better I don't know for me I found that it seems that epoxy does a little bit better than seago for large voids and sanding um for the texture and keeping them nice and hard uh so I don't know but that's my experience now I did buy a bunch of thin these kits are thin because the I do a lot of these small little pieces and um I can just put one little drop of thin in it here and it sticks really quick but once again you have to be careful if you use thin it can run if you over drip that way I use less because what I found is that with the medium or the thick I tend to trying to just get one little drop out it's such a thick consistency you're using more per drop basically than the th that's why I have these THS here for all these little small pieces whereas the mediums and thicks really come in with certain parts but also during working when I have cracks that I want to secure I find that the um mediums and thicks will help for like bigger areas if I'm going to leave that which on this one I'll I'll finish this Edge a different way but like with these cracks here maybe a a medium would be better than a thin um something like that uh because it'll actually get down in there have more body and hold a little bit better um yes you can put epoxies in here once again you have to start messing with the formula a little bit less hardener little bit more resin which will take it longer to cure a lot of times because you've got to have it runnier and the more red the more hardener you put in it typically the thicker it gets when you're dealing with two- part epoxies and it makes it harder to get in there not that it's impossible you can definitely kind of cram it in there with a stick or whatnot um some guys will use a epoxy kind of cram it down in there and then finish it off with a CA on top as a light layer to to make it more smooth and then they can sand it so um once again like this piece here you know big thick crack maybe a maybe a thick CA would be better for this and the thins for these small cracks if you're just trying to get it down in there and um hold it a little bit now which one stronger for wood separation there is a big debate about that as well according to some of the scientific study um information on seago it's almost as strong or just as strong as certain kinds of two-part epoxy um I think you just have to work with a little bit of it all and figure it out now I will say that having thins mediums and thick options are good because even though it's kind of expensive to get all these bought uh what you'll find is that you'll save money in the long run by having multiple options like I said so that you can use thins where you only need Thins and you're not getting material building up on top and you're wasting material um because that's an expense right there so yeah I just thought I'd go over this a little bit I as a general rule with the two-part epoxies I tend to use um this a little bit depending on what I'm doing if it's a big pore uh I don't do huge pores I don't do like epoxy tables but if it's a bigger pore I'll use this to make in and if it's smaller um I will actually use uh like a just a piece of cardboard or wood or something to mix it up on like a pallet um if you're using silicon uh devices like this cup here just make sure that you get all the loose stuff out of there before you mix your epoxy because if you don't that will the new epoxy you make will set and take these flakes of the old epoxy out and it will it could potentially ruin the look or actually make it clumpy and hard to sand and hard to have a good product in the end and as you can see I haven't fully cleaned this one out which is one of the hard parts of using silicon cups like this a silicon tray is a little bit better sometimes a little bit easier to clean out but um yeah so just kind of keep that in mind as well and I hope that helps you guys out kind of make some decisions about the adhesives you want to use in your woodworking um for different things and we will talk to you guys in the next one thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Eric McGrew Sculpting Carving and Furniture

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Id: F8j0JsNu-YI

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024