Stuck On Adhesive Choices

I was adhesive shopping the other day.

To tell you the truth, I miss glue.

It was easy to find, easy to use, inexpensive, uncomplicated, and according to my colleagues in kindergarten, is less filling and tastes great.

I was in search of something to help reattach the side view mirror on my wife's car.  Although I drive it the majority of the time these days, the attribution is similar to that of our kids and pets.  When the dog is doing something adorable, it's "look at my dog."  When the dog tears something up, it's "look what your dog did." 

So the detached mirror is on my wife's car.

These days, there are simply too many choices for adhesives: Contact cement, epoxy, epoxy putty, paste, model cement, glue, krazy glue, super glue, super duper glue...

And even something as simple as glue has become complicated.  You have glue in a bottle, glue in a stick, glue in a metal can, glue that you insert into a gun and shoot at cutout paper dolls -- again, too many choices.

Worst of all, none of them seem to work very well beyond good old Elmer's.  If you want to permanently seal two pieces of paper together, Elmer's white school glue will do the trick.

Beyond that, it's a crap shoot.  Apply the glue, then cross your fingers.  Hopefully you weren't using super glue, or that's how those fingers will remain for the next six months.

I can happily report that, for the first time in my half century on this planet, I finally got super glue to work recently.

After my wife's dog (not my dog) chewed the nosepiece off of my reading glasses, I was able to use a gnawed up tube of super glue (my wife's dog got to that, too) to reattach the little rubber piece to the little plastic piece on the glasses.

It's the first time, dating back to 1975, that super glue actually worked for me.

I vividly remember that first laboratory test in the year that Captain and Tennille released "Love Will Keep Us Together."  Maybe if my friend Bobby Goll and I had had a little of that Captain and Tennille Love, we might have been able to salvage his red Western Auto wagon, because super glue wasn't able to keep the wagon's body and the front wheels together.  The two sections suffered an abrupt divorce after we tied the wagon to the back of my mini bike with a rope and tried a little off-roading in our adjoined back yards.  After discovering the catastrophe and mulling over the various and sundry ways our parents were going to kill us, we pooled our money.  It was a bit less than the amount necessary to purchase the Lincoln Welding equipment required to save our hides.  Instead, we came up with less than two dollars.  Fortunately, in 1975 when $2 could buy you a half a tank of gasoline, it was enough for a tube of that miracle glue we had seen on TV.

So we walked to the 7-Eleven and bought the glue.  It was surprising how tiny the tube was, compared to the model cement and school paste with which we were both intimately familiar. 

Believing it better to be safe than sorry, especially in the pursuit of protecting our posteriors, we used the entire tube.  We read the directions, waited the prescribed length of time to allow the glue to dry, then tugged on the front of the wagon.  The wheels came off before you could say "Radio Flyer." 

It was with that memory that I tackled the mirror project on my wife's car with an epoxy.  Unfortunately, this is the worst option today unless you have an advanced degree in molecular chemistry from M.I.T. 

For starters, instead of simply opening the package, twisting the top of the bottle, and applying liberally, you have to mix two chemicals in equal proportion, then apply the mixture in a specified amount of time.  With my garage bereft of Pyrex beakers, test tubes, and Bunsen burners, I had to do my best with a little plastic lid as the crucible and a tiny piece of ripped cardboard with which to do the stirring. 

After mixing, applying, and holding the mirror onto the side of the car for the required time, I let the car sit for the rest of the day.

The next morning, I took the mirror for a test drive.  It lasted until the car's speedometer hit 35 miles per hour.  Which is about 34 miles per hour more than the wagon test, so maybe I shouldn't complain.

In any event, I've only found one adhesive in my lifetime that can be counted on to work every time.  So if you see a blue car tooling along the highway with a mirror attached to the driver's side door with duct tape, you'll know it's me.  Driving my wife's car.