What type of adhesive is "No More Nails"?

[Jimbo]

I am in the UK and would like to ask some questions about glues.

QUESTION ONE Does anyone know what category or type of adhesive is Unibond's NO MORE NAILS sold for general purpose home use? See

anyone have an ingredients list for this adhesive?

QUESTION TWO Is NO MORE NAILS stronger for woodwork jobs than that white or yellow runny woodworking adhesive which I believe is some sort of PVA adhesive that dries off to leave a hard resin.

QUESTION THREE Does NO MORE NAILS form a stronger bond to the materials being glued than Araldite? Can NO MORE NAILS be heated to a greater temp than Araldite (which I believe weakens at 70 C)?

[john.spevacek]

Ask the manufacturer for 1) an MSDS 2) technical data comparing NMN's to PVA woodglue and 3) the upper working temperature for the adhesive. They will give you far better answers than anything that these forums will provide.

John Aspen Research, -

"Turning Questions into Answers"

Opinions expressed herein are my own and may not represent those of my employer.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think its is an acrylic type glue.

its better where there are gaps..bit any CLOSE fitting glue joint is somewhat stronger than the wood by and large.

MM. Araldite will go higher than that if well mixed and heat cured.

With a slow setting epoxy like that, heating the mixture to about 70C while mixing ensures a very good strength, and heating it to that sort of temp while it dries seems to make it set harder.

[LSR]

Gripfill, No More Nails etc are (apparently) block copolymers

I suspect normal woodworking PVA gives a stronger overall bond because it penetrates the wood grain to a certain extent before polymerising, so the bond has more "depth". NMN just glues the surfaces.

Polyurethane glue may be even better in a clamped joint as it expands and gets forced into the grain before curing.

[Ian Stirling]

Epoxys have a 'gel' temperature.

When they set firstly, they have a fraction of unreacted liquid, that's bound in place by the matrix of already set chains. A small fraction of this will set at room temperature.

When you heat this up to a certain level, the epoxy gets 'rubbery', and heated a bit more may substantially weaken it. However, at this time, the ends of the unreacted liquid molecules are wiggling around due to the heat, and meeting their opposite numbers, and rapidly setting more completely. Heating an epoxy much over the temperature it has been set at will always do this, but as less and less of the liquid remains at high temperatures, the effect is dramatically less.

[Richard Perkin]

The Natural Philosopher wrote in news: [e-mail]:

The solvent-free flavours of adhesive are acrylate based.

I'm a great fan of Gripfill and it's now many years since I used No More Nails, so my reply relates to Gripfill, but I expect other brnads are similar.

The (organic solvent) adhesives are synthetic rubber based, which is why they dry slightly rubbery are cannot be sanded. I believe the base is polychloroprene (aka neoprene) using butanone (aka methyl ethyl ketone, MEK) + xylene as solvent. The product is bulked out by fillers.

It's the MEK + xylene which gives Gripfill its wondrous smell. I was using it last night in the hallway - this morning the addictive (?) smell is still lingering...

There was a recent thread here about what to use to remove such adhesives - the answer is scrape off the bulk, then clean with MEK or other ketone (eg acetone). But watch out for nearby plastics, or painted / varnished surfaces!

But my chemistry (well, chemical engineering) is getting rusty lately after years of disuse - or should that be (solvent) abuse...

Hope this helps

[AlanG]

I had a cracked aluminium thermostat cover off my car back in the 70s. Smeared araldite into the crack and left it on the radiator in the workshop for the morning. Put it back on the car at night and drove away. Was still on the car when I got rid of it a couple of years later.