Best glue for the job?

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Ulises Victoria

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Hello all. I tried to do something like this again, but this time I thought about adding some thin purple plastic sheets between the ebony strip and the wood to add a bit more of visual detail. I cut my blank diagonally, put a layer of Gorilla glue (which works the best for me for gluing tubes or wood to wood), then a square of plastic, another layer of glue, a square of ebony, more glue, another plastic, yet more glue and the top part of the blanks. Everything spent a day in the press. The gorilla glue didn't adhere to the plastic. Bummer! So my question is:
What glue: (a) Polyurethane, (b) Epoxy, (c) CA is best to glue:
(1) metal to metal, (2) metal to wood, (3) acrylic blanks, (4) other plastics to other materials.
Thanks a lot in advance for your comments.
 

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Yeah, I would say medium CA as well, but you should also take some 100 grit paper give or take and skuff up both sides of the accent material. This seems to help the glue grip. I tried it without skuffing things up and the material tended to pop off so now I sand things a bit prior to glue ap.
 
What plastic is the purple plastic?
If its polyethylene, virtually nothing will stick to it. Some glue might seem to stick to it initially, but only mechanically (sticking in the scratches etc.) and will fail quickly.
 
Use some scrap pieces of the plastic on hand and do some tests with different glues and materials. Use the glue that holds the best.

Unless you know where you bought the plastic, or have a marked piece or original packaging, it will be difficult to tell. There are so many "plastics" out there.
 
Where did you get the plastic from? Was it a packaging, or something?
If it has the recycling triangle on it, the number inside will tell you what plastic it is.
 
Usually, the softer the plastic is, the worse glue will stick to it. Polyethylene is the softest- it's what they make glue bottles out of, so that should tell you something right there.
 
CA does not adhere to acrylic/poly very well. At a minimum scuff the "plastic" with sander paper for better adhesion or try epoxy. I have glued pickguard to wood using thick CA and scuffing the pickguard. Just be quick, it has a 25 second work time.
 
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