hey Adam Savage here in my cave with a tool tip and today it's about glue
specifically of the hot variety we're going to be covering my
two favorite guns for hot glue um they use
two different kinds of glue sticks uh and the main one
that i really go for is uh this one a fasten master uh i picked
this up at uh center hardware here in san
francisco a few years ago and i really dig this thing i dig look
hot glue guns come in so many different varieties but many of them
have an attempt to keep the nose off your workbench so it doesn't burn it and
almost all of those attempts are shite almost every hot glue
gun i've ever had that has like a folding stand is shite and doesn't
work and the stand falls off and you gotta throw it away
every single one until this one this is integral it's built right in i
mean i know you can kind of pop this out if you want to but
i don't this is how i use it and i've been
beating the crap out of this thing for a long time
and it still holds up it is not cheap i will say that and i try and do tool tips
for things that are reasonably affordable for most of the viewers most
of you guys um in this regard i will say having used
40 hot glue guns over the years i really really like this one and i like the
trigger aspect because i use these long long sticks i don't have to replace them
that often um oh also it's got a switch right here
for turning it on and off it doesn't just
go on when you plug it in this is a great piece of kit
uh and come i highly recommend it on the other side of the equation well
on another facet of the equation is this
this 3m uh what do you call it scotch weld hot
melt applicator uh i got given this thing
uh by 3m a few years ago i think they sent one to frankie polito to give to me
i think that's how that worked and i got a whole bunch of these
low melt sticks and i'm here to tell you i love these low melt sticks and this
this glue gun it's missing a lot of the features of the other one it doesn't
have a trigger you got to push it with your thumb
the sticks are short you have to replace them all the time
and yet
i really like the low melt adhesive um one it operates like any other glue gun
you know you lay down a bead you stick it to the thing and you know i
i think you can prototype the whole planet in hot glue if you had enough
cardboard and glue sticks and like this is kind of
one of the ways that i think when i am mechanically problem solving stuff i cut
shapes out of foam core glued them together i pivot them i make mechanical
arrangements and hot glue gives me both a lot of
ease of trying stuff out quickly but the low melt sticks do this whole
other thing one if you get some hot glue on your finger
now the proper way to deal with it is i'm touching hot hot glue is to rub your
fingers that's absolutely one of the key ways to
stop hot glue from burning you is to start rubbing it second is to
stick it in your mouth and the water in your mouth will actually keep it from
burning you but most people don't trust me when i say that even though you just
saw me do it on camera your results may vary i'm not going to
recommend that you try and burn yourself with hot glue and then try and solve it
that would be uh don't do that don't try that at home
i think that might be the very first time i've ever said don't try that at
home untested it's kind of far out anyway
the low melt means it burns you less you have a
a little more working time weirdly it feels like but i'm not sure about that
uh but the other thing i like about the low
melt is that i can kind of you kind of take this
stuff apart a little easier than the normal hot glue
actually now it's sticking quite well um that
for prototyping is really really great um
there's a a a resiliency to these glue sticks that i dig
hot glue is pretty self-similar like i haven't
determined a huge variance except in terms of temperature
and i know i know yeah i'm totally aware that there are like a million varieties
like there's more types of hot glue than there are
flavors of bundaberg beer i don't know all those flavors i know
what i use which is these low melt sticks
these clear sticks and the other hot glue gun and
while neither of these is a super entry-level tool
they are both um they have both survived years of abuse here
in the cave and they come with my highest recommendation
thank you guys for joining me uh for this tool tip and
if you have an entry-level hot glue gun that you have found to be
robust and uh and excellent i would like to know about it i
i want to point out why it's important that hot glue guns
have uh a stand that holds them up like this because the cheap hot glue guns
look what's happening in hot glue gun is there's a heating element up here and as
the hot glue gets near it it melts and it comes out as a liquid
obvi with a lot of the lower cost versions of hot glue guns the stand
falls off and everyone starts laying the hot glue gun down like this and hot glue
eventually starts to just like seep out and they just start to deteriorate it's
just it's terrible terrible situation um so if you've got an
entry-level hot glue gun that you have found survives the kind of
abuse your average theater person would put it through i'd
like to know about it uh links to these will be in the
comments below thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip
i'll see you next time