How to make hot melt by hand

Not so long ago, appearing on the shelves of construction stores, hot melt quickly gained popularity among needlewomen and domestic craftsmen. Thanks to the speed of bonding and the breadth of application, glue and thermo gun are unparalleled in convenience and affordability. Of course, the strength of joints in this way is not the highest and the scope of application is limited by the temperature range. But with the everyday tasks of making various crafts with their own hands, hot glue can handle the ease and speed that satisfies most requests.

Safety precautions

First of all, it's worth mentioning safety measures for works using hot melt. With their hands, many housewives have sensed the danger of high temperatures in the kitchen and at home, so you need to remember about safety.

Glue, adhering to the skin, gives off a significant part of the heat not only during cooling, but also during solidification. Therefore, it can cause burns much deeper than a hot frying pan or tile, from which you can pull your hand in time, getting minimal damage. In addition, you should carefully read the instructions to the device and follow the recommendations given by the manufacturer.

Wax instead of glue

It's time to test the device in the case. Of course, they can be glued, but it is much more interesting to find an original application for it. The principle of the pistol is to heat the material and melt it to the liquid state. This means that any material with a suitable melting point can be used in a gun. So, wax crayons when heated in this way become not just a gel-like mass, like glue tubes, but a liquid, like drinking yogurt.

Using different colors and fantasy, you can get variegated drops on cardboard or thick paper, and if you drip from a height of half a meter, you get blots. The pistol, of course, can get dirty, and to clean it after art, you should skip some of the factory glue that cleans the wax from the inside. Recall that the wax - a pretty fat material, and not all in a row the surface will be able to hold it for a long time. The porous structure of wood or paperboard is capable of providing sufficient grip.

Vintage Wax Seals

In the same way, you can warm up the wax to make seals and prints, for example, to seal the letter with congratulations or a personal message. Using coins or other embossed metal objects, one can even achieve similarity to the wax seals that have come out of everyday use .

A letter with such a seal will not only please the addressee with its originality, but also introduce some kind of intimacy and mystery into correspondence. Oh yeah, the wax is quite fragile, unlike the sealing wax, so do not trust these letters to the mail, present them personally.

Glue decoration

Transparent or colored hot glue with their own hands can be turned not only into the fastener, but also into the decoration element. Simple and inconspicuous glass vases, processed from the outside by a pattern of hot melt, will play with new colors and will impress your guests as an original work of your hands.

In the same way, you can draw voluminous figures and whole pictures on any household containers, boxes and just on cardboard under the frame on the wall. For coloring of colorless glue, not any paint will suit - watercolor or gouache will quickly erase from the surface. It is best to use paints on an acrylic base or, in extreme cases, nail polish.

Crafts made from hot melt with their own hands - a wonderful pastime with children, training in them accuracy, responsibility and artistic flair. The main thing - do not leave children with the included or simply warmed-up device alone.

Color classification of glue

Let's deal with these colored sticks. It can not be that manufacturers simply at random add dyes. Indeed, there is a recommended international marking and here are the main types of rods for a thermo gun:

• Simple translucent cylindrical sticks are the most popular type of glue. Universal, used for a variety of surfaces and materials, suitable for almost any hidden and open fasteners.

• Color opaque rods differ from universal ones only in color. It makes sense to acquire them for those who are engaged in handicrafts, children and florists. They allow you to mask the place of bonding to the general color of the product without the use of additional color.

• Black and gray stickers are designed for waterproofing areas, and are also used as electrical insulation. Non-shrinking and adhesive properties of the material are used in the sealing of window frames and in the insulation of current-carrying parts of electrical appliances.

• White opaque rods are used especially for gluing metal and glass, except, of course, universal glues, painted in white, pay attention to the packaging.

• Yellow or candle, wood-like translucent sticks have better adhesion to the porous structure of wood or cardboard.

In any case, not all manufacturers have yet reached common standards and it is necessary to check the technical properties of the adhesive, checking the packaging. You can also find out the melting temperature of the material and the approximate temperature range of its use.

In electrical appliances, often required materials that withstand prolonged heating, in other cases, you may not need a hard plastic fixation, such as silicone, for example, in the manufacture of hand tools. Also, you need to consider the capabilities of your device to work with glue, so that the thermo gun has enough power to melt the material in the process.

Pistol with your own hands

The market is now awash with tools not of the best quality, and thermo-guns are no exception. They break, usually at the most inopportune moment, and you may need a reliable device to use the remaining hot melt.

You can quickly build a heater to work from an old iron or use a soldering iron, but you can face the problem of overheating the material. For the constant work of the craftsmen, the idea of making a hot-melt gun with one's own hands is more likely to inspire.

A power regulator will help control the temperature

First of all, we need to make a power regulator, no matter what heating device we use. Overheating of the adhesive material will inevitably lead to its strong dilution (as a result - spontaneous leakage from the gun) or even burnout.

A regulator is manufactured by sequentially switching the dimmer into a circuit break, as a switch, where it will perform these functions and adjust the power of the supplied current. It will be convenient to make a separate outlet with a regulator on a piece of a wooden board, it is likely that control of the current capacity will be needed for other devices.

Glue gun on the basis of a boiler

Now we can be sure that the boiler will not burn without water, but will only heat up to the desired temperature. The next stage will be the manufacture of a comfortable handle, so as not to burn yourself on a heated device. The most accessible material for the handle is wood, but it is also afraid of high temperatures and for its protection you can use Teflon tape used in cooking.

As a working vessel for melting glue, it is necessary to make a tube and funnel from a tin can, connecting them together so that the edges of the funnel cover the tube. The diameter of the working crucible should be such that the funnel is tightly clamped in the coils of the boiler. In addition, we strengthen the structure with copper wire and test the device on a suitable piece of glue rod. The lack of a feeder lever compensates this design with an incredible "omnivorous", that is, the tool is suitable for any type of hot melt, regardless of the melting temperature.

If the glue has run out

Consider the situation on the contrary, there is a useless thermo-gun without suitable stickers, and you need to glue something "here and now". We put aside the orphaned tool before buying suitable consumables for it and pay attention to another, equally universal in use heating device - a hair dryer.

Needless to say, hair models will be inappropriate here, meaning a professional building hair dryer that produces a large air temperature. Here they can warm up the glue right on the joint. By the way, the glue is literally lying under your feet.

We offer the 2 most common options, how to make hot melt with your own hands:

1. Foamed polypropylene or polyethylene can be found occasionally as a packing material, but more often it occurs in construction and finishing works as heat and noise insulation. The connection is not so much strong as plastic, not afraid of shock and vibration.

2. All well-known plastic bottles that fill the dumps of the whole Earth are also suitable as glue material. The entire bottle is heated by a hair dryer for a long time, so it is better to cut the plate of the right size at the place of gluing.

Both variants are unstable at high temperatures, but they are suitable for most jobs where the use of conventional hot melt is sufficient. Thus, you recycle the garbage and get an almost inexhaustible supply of glue.

Confusion in names: glue for electrical circuits

For people connected with circuitry, the words "heat-conducting glue" have the same meaning as "hot-melt glue for radiators". It is very difficult to produce such a material with your own hands, because chemical reactions are used here, and not a change in the aggregate state of the substance under the influence of temperature.

It is impossible to compare different in composition and purpose of hot melt glue for a gun and hot melt for LEDs. With their own hands, it is possible to produce so-called glycerin cement from lead gland and glycerin as a heat-conducting layer and a gluing agent simultaneously.

There are also proven industrial versions of heat-resistant materials for bonding, which, of course, it is better to have in stock, than to prepare hot glue with your own hands. "Alsil-5" and "Radial" - the most famous brands among specialists. In addition, several types of heat-conducting rubber are produced. And about how the heat-resistant glue is used, it is necessary to read the instructions.