Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Good chance Gorilla super glue will melt the foam .. test first ...

GPW wrote:Good chance Gorilla super glue will melt the foam .. test first ...

so do you use the Gorilla wood glue or just plain Gorilla glue

Just the regular Foaming stuff (Brown liquid gooey stuff ) ... never tried their wood glue , T2 has worked so well ...

FYI and from other ppl's experiences:

T2 and T3 to glue the foam pieces take forever to dry. Gorilla glue (not the wood one, but the all purpose one) works wonderful, but make sure you have clamps or some sort of system to keep stuff in place. GG expands and foams.

Hugs,
Ratkity

swampjeep wrote:

GPW wrote:Good chance Gorilla super glue will melt the foam .. test first ...

so do you use the Gorilla wood glue or just plain Gorilla glue

oh i see, my bottle says gorilla glue.

just bought some t3. it was cheaper than the t2. which hasn't been the case in the past.

also both bottles t2 and t3 say 'waterproof'.

Eagle , I've almost used up my first gallon of T2 .... back to the HD tomorrow for another ...

maybe i won't use as much this time around.

eaglesdare wrote:just bought some t3. it was cheaper than the t2. which hasn't been the case in the past.

also both bottles t2 and t3 say 'waterproof'.

Wow Eagle! Certainly a sale or mis-marked. There's a $7 difference between the T2 and T3 gallon size at my Lowes.

Hugs,
Ratkity

Lets just consider another Crazy idea for the moment ... I read about some guys in Europe joining foam by wicking a solvent LIGHTLY between the pieces ... Just enough to slightly Melt the pieces together on their surfaces... Something to be tried on scrap ... I have some Acetone and Lacquer thinner...

Another even wilder thought was , stretch the fabric over the foam and Mist some solvent on with a sprayer LIGHTLY , followed by a hard roller ... Might just work , No Glue ...and it would melt into even a slick surfaced foam ... Hmmmm???

Call me Crazy !!! or Bear ...

Ratkity wrote:

eaglesdare wrote:just bought some t3. it was cheaper than the t2. which hasn't been the case in the past.

also both bottles t2 and t3 say 'waterproof'.

Wow Eagle! Certainly a sale or mis-marked. There's a $7 difference between the T2 and T3 gallon size at my Lowes.

Hugs,
Ratkity

yup, the t3 was $20.08 i beleive, and with the military 10%discount i got it for $18.07. not bad.

so gpw, you are saying to melt the foam and stick together, like melting wax and fixing a broken candle? that sounds like too much work for me. hehehe
have you read the new sticky? be careful with this stuff when attempting to melt!

Eagle having hot wired many foam wing cores in the past .... All were done Outside ... and I was Upwind of the vapors... Mike's Totally right!!! ... any material has its quirks , like formaldehyde in plywood ... Epoxy, you can build up a sensitivity to it ... All MUST be respected for what they are and used in accordance to Safe principles ...

~ Bear~

eaglesdare wrote:

S. Heisley wrote:bravebluemice wrote:

Here's an interesting question, could the glued canvas be applied directly over foam as an outer skin? This could save me forty pounds!!!

When I needed to lighten my hatch, I rebuilt the hatch using a heavy carpenter canvas and Elmer's wood glue directly on top of the foam. I attached the foam to wooden spars using small screws with washers (to distribute the force). I painted a coat of wood glue over the foam and let it dry a little to get it tacky, then laid my canvas...careful not to crease. After the canvas went on, I applied some more layers of wood glue to the canvas, letting the previous layer dry a bit. After all that dried, I applied some of that white roofing elastomer over the canvas. It has held up very well.

The hardened Elmers wood glue held the shape very well, as I knew would. I chose it because all of my build clothes that got wood glue on them always had hard spots even though the clothes had been washed multiple times.

Todah

eaglesdare wrote:...I have to decide on windows. I may make some to keep in the thrift mission.

Pat G

You might consider large, clear deck plates.

Todah

Now that I have some results, I figured I'd throw another adhesive onto this list...
In my build thread (here), I've been using thickened epoxy to glue the foam after PL300 didn't work very well for my needs.
Most of my bonds are foam to wood stiffeners and it was tough to get the bead of PL to flatten out without clamping it so hard it deformed the foam (even with wood stringers to spread the clamping loads)

The epoxy gives you a long set up time and, once it kicks off, it's only about an hour before you can move the parts around. Like PL, it's pretty good at filling gaps but it cures hard so it's easily sanded. As with any adhesive properly selected and applied, the substrate will fail before the bond does.

While I did use PL to bond the inner door skin to the foam, the rest of the panel skins will be epoxied to the foam. Even if I were not glassing my shell, I would probably still go with the epoxy - to me, the increased bonding area, shorter cure time, and ease of assembly are worth the increased cost and the need for gloves.