Want to take your woodworking and DIYing skills up a notch? With these 12 ingenious hot glue hacks, you’ll have all the tools at hand for creating amazing projects!
Whether it’s gluing difficult materials or jazzing up an existing piece of furniture, there are plenty of creative uses for this handy tool.
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Great tips. Turners use hot glue a lot to temporary hold a project to a piece of sacrificial wood attached to the headstock. They also sell different types of hot glue which vary in holding strength. I use hot glue when I am stack cutting on both the scrollsaw and like you did on the bandsaw. My wife and daughter use it for scrap book work. Pretty versatile tool. I think I have 4 or 5 laying around that I picked up from thrift stores. Thanks for even more ideas on their use.
Jim Coogan Thanks Jim. That’s a good tip. Overall, hot glue is great for temporarily holding something in place. Yes, it’s a very popular tool in the craft world, but I thought that it needs to get a little more attention in the wood working world too 🙂
What I find amazing is how you keep your lab coat so white. Do you buy a new one for ever video? Keep up the good work and thank you so much for the videos.
Howard Rhoades Well, it washes up pretty good 🙂
Allways have a hot glue gun plugged in at the shop. So many uses. Great vid.
Matt Diresta I agree, thanks Matt!
Nice vid Linn. I only started using a hot glue gun in my shop a few years ago, and I’ve seen a few years go by, because I didn’t realize how strong and simple it is.
Donnie G It is surprisingly strong! Actually I thought it would be fun to do a video where I really test the strength of hot glue compared to other types of glues. So hopefully I’ll have that out soon.
Excellent tips. I loved the linseed oil video too. I noticed some new camera angles, video styling and editing. Nice job.
Maxima Thanks Maxima!
great video Lynn, i like the idea of using hot glue for templates and hold wires on wood!
Sebastian ocaño Thanks Sebastian!
Great video topic Lynn, I never think to use hot glue but I think I’ll try some of your suggested uses now! Thanks 🙂
Zac Higgins Thanks Zac! Yes, it’s easy to forget sometimes how useful these tricks can be 🙂
A whole bunch of neat tricks 🙂
I like the fact that your channel has so many various tips and topics .. and you are presenting them in a great and clear manner!
bra jobbat .. 🙂
stringmanipulator Tack sa mycket!
Some great tips in there Linn! I also use Hot glue to mount small parts on a faceplate for turning on a lathe, and for securing parts for routing too. It’s maybe worth pointing out that it’s best to get a gun that actually gets pretty hot, as some can be under powered and not get the glue hot enough to melt it properly for the best holding power. These also lead to the glue drying too fast.
Good point Richard. I have had a baby gun for years which has been pretty useless – basically the glue dries about half a second after it leaves the nozzle. Time to upgrade, methinks 🙂
***** Thanks Richard! I would agree with that. It’s quite annoying to work with a hot gun that doesn’t get hot enough. Another example of why it’s usually a good idea to get better quality.
Some great ideas! Only problem I have with hat glue is the strings it creates. Like your mad scientist coat. Thanks fo your hard work in creating and sharing your projects.
tombensky Thanks! One way to get rid of the strings is to put a heat gun or hair dryer over them.
Love my glue gun! So cheap yet so useful! Cool video, loved the air tight joints tip!
Nice. I especially like the idea of using hot melt glue to attach the LED strip lighting.
Steve French Thanks Steve! Yes, I’ve been using the hot glue gun when it comes to attaching LED lights in general to things lately and it’s been working nicely,
A very instructive and entertaining video, Linn! I think I knew about 3 of these hacks, so thanks much for the other 9!
Great tips. Bought a hot glue gun yesterday and was suprised how well it holds wood together.
Avoid using it to insulate electical connections. Old glue can become conductive when it turns brown.
If you want things to stay glued together longer and you are able to drill holes with counter sunk heads, use the glue like a plug (screw with a head on both ends)
My most used application for hot glue: mold simple connectors. *Hot glue won’t stick to baking paper*, at least it worked with all the slightly translucent paper types (the brownish one wasn’t working as well). I solder wires to pins of normal pin headers for example, then put a small dab of hot glue on the baking paper and push the connector in. I try to use an amount of glue so the connector is half done. *This is the most important part* don’t try to remove or even move anything until the glue is cold. If you move the paper on still soft glue it will stick even after it has become cold. I then remove the cold connector, put another dab of glue on the paper and push the other side in. After cooling I now have two quite flat sides and the excess left and right can be cut away with flush trim cutters (works much better than a knife). The result looks almost like a factory molded connector including wire kink protection.
Waterproofing is a great tip, I used it in my last project 🙂 thanks !
Forgot to add: check the glue stick labelling carefully, there are a variety of formulations some of which are not water resistant, some are low temperature (usually craft store sticks) and others are designed to stick special materials and may require special preparation or just cost a lot more than what you really need. If you are having trouble with the glue sticking another thing to look for is the temperature of what you are sticking together – if its cold then the glue will harden too soon and form a weak joint so consider warming up your project in the sun, with a hair dryer or whatever. Been there, done that too. 🙂
Love you, Darbin! You inspire me to do things… Greetings from Cancun, Mexico.
Really interesting ideas – my father was a bookbinder and used hot glue routinely in that trade. He encouraged me to transfer this to woodworking (my trade) and the results were terrific. Hot glues joints – well clamped – provide great bonds! I was really interested in your supporting pyramids – this has made me want to experiment with moulding of shapes with hot glue for my model making!