Apparently, the first thing that Dustin at Hotmelt.com did when he got into the office this morning was answer the email I sent them over the weekend, wherein I explained my confusion about the different temps, whining about my worry that I'd ordered the wrong adhesive sticks from them, and so on.
(Those who value customer service take note.)
He set me straight: the low temp version of that gun is labeled "LT". Mine is not. Ergo, mine is a high temp gun. Eh, supposedly. Because that is a new labeling scheme. My gun could be from before 3M changed things around. I think he's assuming I bought it brand new from new stock. Not sure.
My guess is that if it is a low-temp gun (as originally planned for and expected, ahem) then the high-melt adhesive will simply refuse to melt in it. So when the new adhesive arrives, that should provide the final acid test.
Incidentally, "Fixsy" glue sticks are crap, don't buy them unless you're only gluing glitter to your kid's Hallowe'en costume. I am returning a 5 lb box of them to Amazon which I bought on the advice of some YouTube rock star who I naively thought knew what he was talking about. Turns out he's kind of a charming and cheerful dumbass.
So after the glues sticks "everyone uses" turned out to be crap, I began investigating industrial grade glue sticks. The fun thing is, there are industrial grade glue sticks - especially the high temp ones - for just about any purpose. There's loads of things your garden variety milky sticks from the craft store kinda suck at sticking to: glass, plastics, plus they are soft and weak - you can't put together furniture with that stuff.
There are industrial glue sticks you can put furniture together with. I found specialty hot melt sticks for:
- "potting" electrical components
- assembling and sealing cardboard boxes
- gluing hard-to-stick surfaces like glass or smooth metal
- gluing hard-to-stick plastics like PE and PP (!)
- putting together wood furniture
- gluing headliners into car interiors - that specific task
- SPRAYED-ON hot glue machines - no word on whether armies also use such horrifying devices
- that weird snot-like soft rubber goo used on some food packaging - it's a hot-melt too
So that's nice and all, until you get to the part where you have to buy TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS of glue sticks at a time from most industrial vendors. Nobody - not for their entire lifetime - needs 25 lbs of glue sticks, unless that is what you do all day.
Then I found www.hotmelt.com...
Yes, this is gonna be a plug because I plug companies when they are nice to me,
and I diss companies when they are jerks to me.
What goes around comes around: when someone is awesome, tell all your friends.
When someone sucks, tell all your friends. Vote with your wallet.
What hotmelt.com has going for you is sample packs: you can buy one or two pounds of a particular industrial-grade adhesive - which normally come in 25 lb boxes, either to find out if you like it... or if you just don't need very much.
Hotmelt.com also carries consumer grade sticks, over a wide range of prices. Their bulk prices on consumer grade sticks compete handily with the low-rent crap on Amazon, so I would just buy that from hotmelt also, if that's your jam. And you don't have to buy big quantities of the consumer-grade sticks. I like these guys, so far. Granted, all I've done is order something, it hasn't arrived yet, and I've had one email exchange. First impressions count for a lot with me, however.
More on this saga when the glue sticks get here, I guess. Oi.
In my defense, I thought this whole, "buying an industrial hot glue gun" thing was going to be simpler, when I started out.
Oh no, not another learning experience! (I hate those. Learning is frequently painful.)
Oh by the way, you really want to wear gloves and should consider long sleeves -
and closed-toe shoes - when working with high temp hot-melt adhesives. This is a
serious safety issue. If you have ever "napalmed" your skin and made a painful
blister with a regular glue gun... then consider that the temp of a High Temp
glue gun is almost twice as high and it will burn the ever-loving hell out of you.
Be safe, wear PPE.
A final note: I apologize if I am overwhelming anyone with too much information; I am regurgitating what I learn about this new tool, as I learn it. Rest assured, once I have spent some time with it, figured out whether the idea even has merit, learned about all the adhesive options and so on, I will summarize everything I have learned in a final post on the subject, with the significant outcomes and major points so that others may avoid my suffering. But that post may be some time in the future...
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