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Hot glue melts when hot

A project log for Truncated Icosidodecahedron Lamp

A lamp made of 930 laser cut parts in a heavily geometric design

zackZack 05/06/2020 at 16:040 Comments

Found a minor hiccup with the lamp I made.  This morning when the sun was beating down on it the shaft seemed a bit too wobbly.  I think it is down to the glue.  Aiming for the "don't buy anything" goal meant I didn't have much fast drying wood glue to work with.  It would have taken months to assemble if I had used the wood glue I had on hand.  So I used hot melt glue for a lot of it.  The bits where I used wood glue are solid, but the hot glue flexes a little and flexes more when warm.  I'm still pretty confident in the design if assembled with a glue that dries hard, but I'm not about to disassemble it to replace the glue.  Instead I took the handle from a broken rake, cut it to length, painted it black, and glued it to the inside of the shaft.  Now it's a lot more stiff.

Again, I'm 99% sure this is down to the hot glue given that the issue is a lot more obvious when sitting in the Florida sun on a hot day in a room of windows with no air flow or AC, but thought I should mention it.

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