One of the most significant stuff to know about the Consumer/Do-It-Yourself (DIY) market is that there is NO one adhesive that can do it all. Despite what the advertiser may voice, one must be a careful consumer to select the right adhesive for the job. Several types of adhesives exist in the marketplace today, including so-called "Multi-purpose", "Super Glue", "Wood Glue" and "Quick-Set Two-Part Epoxy".

 

Within this market, various applications exist, such as:

 

The Story of Post-It© Notes

 

 The typical adhesive - invented in a church choir. We all know them, we all utilize them - Post-its in every size and color. But hardly anyone actually knows where this typical adhesive comes from.

 

 

The history of the Post-it note began in the cathedral choir in the parish of North St. Paul in Minnesota. A associate of the choir, Art Fry, had marked various places in his music score with strips of paper, but when he turned the pages the scraps of paper often fluttered out. Since Fry worked for a large company, 3M, which also produced adhesives, he remembered a colleague who had discovered an adhesive that hadn’t really stuck properly. It was exactly this adhesive that Fry used on his paper strips, which now stayed in exactly the correct position in his music score. This was the start of the quick career of a quite modest, but incredibly practical product. But what makes the notes actually stick?

 

A clever combination of materials, mixing speed and emulsifier creates an adhesive dispersion causing little spheres with a diameter of 30 to 50 microns to develop. These balls of adhesive are anchored to the paper with a different type of adhesive. This base is a dispersion adhesive where the balls have a far smaller diameter. The grouping of large balls of adhesive bedded in an adhesive layer creates the desired effect: the note sticks without damaging the surface it is stuck to because only the tops of the larger balls stick, not the broad uniform base layer.

 

 

 

As it brings out the child in many adults, model-building continues a very popular hobby. Each year thousands make the pilgrimage to special model-building trade fairs and are astonished - what they find is the stuff of model-building dreams. There are cars, ships, planes, trains, steam engines, hot-air balloons, houses and trees, landscapes and streets - all, of course, in miniature and as correct to the original as possible. A great deal of adhesive has been used in their construction.

 

 

What usually starts out with a tiny model ship or train, often ends in the building of grand model landscapes. Model-building hobbyists dole out countless millions of dollars each year, and a big deal of this goes on the classic model - the electric railway. The majority modellers are, of course, men. Many buy complete kits; others insist on making their own. The obsession of some goes so far that they install machines for working metal in their garages. But whether a cheap model for beginners is being built, or the modeller has greater plans in mind, whether the project is a railway system, planes or model ships, a simple static model or a fully-functioning imitation, none of this would be likely with no adhesive. Traditional timber adhesives and split second adhesives are very popular, which can be used to join many metals and synthetic materials.

 

Synthetic materials such as Plexiglas - used in replica ship-building and all types of glazing - or Lexan - used in building many model cars, are frequently set with specialist synthetic adhesives. These adhesives in part rely on the standard of cold welding: the adhesive dissolves the synthetic surfaces of the parts and then fuses them together. The hulls of model ships are made of hardened glass-fiber polyester or epoxy resin. To join these, adhesives with an epoxy resin base are required. These can even be used to join such difficult surfaces as polystyrene, which through its lightness is a perfect material for the fuselage and airplane wings, but is also used in building the landscapes for model railways.

 

Apart from the strength and the toughness of the binding, the method and dose of application also plays a role in adhesives for model-building. Fine nozzles for pin-point application to tiny pieces and hard-to-reach edges make things much easier. The gluing of base coverings requires adhesives that can be applied consistently over larger surface areas: sprayable adhesives help the grass to shoot up in model railway landscapes.

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You have something you wish to stick? Then just heat up a few Gummi Bears. Simply put them in a double boiler at a maximum of 140 degrees F, after that add a little water to the bears until you can effortlessly apply the mixture with a paint brush and, hey presto! -- there’s your glue.

 

This is just a single of over 30,000 types of adhesive and this hard to believe variety of adhesives is matched only by the diversity of ways they are used, which is sometimes very strange indeed.

 

The uses people come up with are as original as they are effective when it comes to adapting adhesive tape to their own needs. Cat and dog owners, who fight a daily battle to remove the hairs of their four-legged friends from pullovers, trousers and sofas, have come to love all types of strong, broad adhesive tape, which are ten times more effective than any normal clothes-brush. Hair, crumbs, fluff and dust are grabbed by the sticky side.

 

Even photographers and the fashion industry have long since found the value of adhesive tape. The fact that the clothes in glossy magazines, advertisements and catalogs forever look as if they fit the models like a glove, is not only down to their great figures, but also to the smart use of adhesive tape. Everything sticking up or out won’t be sewn, but just stuck down. And anyone who has worn a backless evening gown knows the true value of strong tape. Even Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida Parker used tape to give themselves deep décolleté without the necessity for unsightly brastraps.  

 

 

Photographers too make unwanted chubby rolls and wrinkles disappear just by using tape. Problem areas are just pulled smooth and stuck down. And just by the way, even gangsters in combat films are glad to have their dependable adhesive tape along. When the bad guy wants to lock his captive away in the vault quietly, it isn’t the revolver that is his best friend; it’s the tough adhesive tape that makes sure that the imprisoned keeps his mouth shut and draws a huff when he rips it off again.