I added some oak trim to some black melamine shelves a few years ago, using some sort of glue, maybe it was Titebond. Hey, it stuck for a while. But then the weight of the stuff my daughter put on the shelves made the shelves want to bow a bit; the oak trim was not as pliable.
It's funny in retrospect that people here recommend using pieces of melamine with clamps while gluing up a project, specifically for its "glue-repelling" qualities. Oh well.
What should I use this time?
I've used Roo Glue (yeah that is really the name although I don't think they make it from roos) and it works great. It was the product suggested by the company that made a bunch of KD Euro cabinet boxes for me and it really lived up to expectations. If this is an application where you never expect the melamine surface to show its face again I'd think that you could just sand it with 80-grit and use regular Gorilla glue (not made from ...) and be done with it.
Ultimately, nothing sticks to melamine. You can get some (fake)adhesion from some glues, but there is no real 'adhesion through penetration/absorption' IOW, a real bond isn't formed, but a seal to stop the air from crawling into the joint, is. If one were to find an adhesive that truly bonded to melamine, the entire cabinet industry would beat a path to your door.
Maybe even 77.
I wish melamine did actually repel glue, my TS extension table is melamine and I have chunks of the melamine missing where the glue stuck during a glue up.
HEY! How do they get the melamine to stick to the substrate??? :~)
Heat. Before it cures. Once cured, nothing sticks to it, like polyethylene. You can get some nasty glues, like Gorilla to stick to, as you could with silicon, but a true 'bond' nope. I have used a lacquer-based adhesive that stuck pretty damned good, but in the end, not a good bond, like you'd get glueing two pieces of oak. I have also pulled scabs of melamine off the the substrate, but never would I call it a mechanical, trustworthy 'bond'.
You used the oak on the edges? If so, you need to either make shorter or stiffer shelves or afix the trim mechanically as well as with glue. By "mechanically" I mean screws or dowels/biscuits.
If you were trying to stick the wood to the melamine surface and not the edge then you need to remove the melamine where the wood is going to go - I use a router - and then glue normally.
There is a glue supposedly made to glue to melamine, never used it, no idea if good or bad. Regular glue *does* stick to it, just not well.
than regular glue. Sortakinda like aluminum solder..works..kinda.
I wonder if paste wax would help. Worth a try, wot?
-- When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire. -- Whoopi Goldberg
Big, fat, dripping, juicy boogers.
i wonder if vhb tape would work. i've never been able to get it off anything without cutting it off.
Your best bet would be to biscuit the trim
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