Sticky Stuff
When it comes to mending things, you have a wide choice of glue and tape to help you out. Here are some of your options.
Wood glue. Today’s wood glue is strong enough that a board is more likely to break somewhere else than at the place where you glued it. There are several types of wood glue for fancier woods, however, the plain yellow wood glue will most often do what you want it to do. When you use wood glue, be sure you put glue on both parts you want to glue together. Wipe the excess and use a clamp to hold the two parts together (or you can wrap string around as a substitute for a clamp).
Super glue. When super glue first came out, the advertisements suggested that it would glue anything together, which is not entirely true. However, it may work well for mending plastic. Be sure to avoid getting it on your hands or any other part of your body because it will stick your skin together. Use fingernail polish remove to get it off your skin.
Epoxy. Epoxy is powerful and strong. It involves mixing up two chemicals to create the glue, which is a little more trouble than other types of glue, but it sets up very hard and very strong and is a good choice when you are concerned about pressure on the mended part.
Construction Adhesive. When you watch the home shows and they are building a fence out of stone or block, they often use construction adhesive to help hold things together. That’s how powerful it is. You can also use it to glue panel to walls. The downside is that it is tough to get off if you decide to take the panels off the wall.
Duct tape. Contrary to its name, duct tape is not for furnace ducts. Get the special metal-backed tape for your ducts because that is air proof (the whole point of taping your ducts). However, duct tape is very sticky and flexible and is useful for mending anything where you don’t care what the mend looks like. Duct tape is great in an emergency when you need to put a couple of things together (e.g., water pipes) on a temporary basis. You can use it to hold things down such as electrical cords you don’t want people to trip over.
Electrical tape. This kind of tape is non-conductive and is good for electrical work. But it also comes in a number of colors and can be used to mark things. For example, if you are using a sound system, you can use electrical tape to color code each microphone cord at both ends so you know how to make adjustments.