wood to plexiglas adhesive

[Bill in Detroit]

I'm thinking of laminating wood to plexi for walking canes.

Can anyone recommend an adhesive that will dry clear enough to allow the wood grain to show through the plexiglas and strong enough to use on this sort of item?

Going on thin might be an advantage in avoiding gaps. I will have a press by morning to do the clamping and will be able to exert considerable force.

Bill

[Bob Heveri]

Bill,

Try this website.

Bob Heveri

[cselby]

Years ago I used a product called J Bond. Can't think of the chemical name. It softens up the surface of the plexi (casting resin). Need to work fast as this stuff evaporates very fast.

Call up a plastics supply place and ask for the 'solvent' for plexi.

Pete

[Bill in Detroit]

Um ... in a hurry?

(psst ... no link!)

Bill

[Bill in Detroit]

Thanks for the tip. I'm sort of hoping that Bob can get back to me with a link but I hadn't considered ordinary solvent adhesive. My mind set was more along the line of a clear epoxy. Hmmm methinks I need to do still more thinking.

Bill

[Prometheus]

Seems like the solvent route may be the way to go- at least to my mind. Less likely to get bubbles under the plexiglass.

[CW]

The only way that a plastic solvent is going to stick anything to anything is to dissolve both parts. Kind of hard to do with wood.

[cselby]

The solvent semi melts the plexi surface - enuff to smear up your hands if your sloppy. The semi melted plastic is like glue. If you work fast and slap the plexi to the wood and lightly clamp it, you get a bond. Actually quite a strong bond. I've used this to laminate some colored plexi together and with wood (oak and walnut) to make boxes, pen holders, etc. It's an Industrial Arts project thing.

Use the solvent liberally and in a ventilated area. The solvent is quite volatile. The plexi is wetted down with the solvent - be generous and while still wet the wood or other plastic (also wetted) is applied and clamped. The hard part is keeping things aligned until clamped.

The stuff I used had a trade name of Jay Bond. The chemical name eludes me but it uses 42$ worth of alphabet.

Pete

[Bill in Detroit]

Thanks, Pete. For the use I have in mind, alignment isn't critical ... but thanks for the tip of wetting the wood, too. I have some novel ideas in mind and some gen-you-wine plexiglas sitting here that my former employer paid another guy to mess up because they didn't trust me to louse it up. ;-)

I probably wouldn't have trashed as much of it ... so that I wouldn't have ended up with as much on my shelves as I have.

Yup ... things worked out better their way.

Bill

[Bill in Detroit]

Would that be methylene di-chloride?

Bill