How-To: Custom Color Hot Glue Sticks

Craft & Design Science
How-To:  Custom Color Hot Glue Sticks

“Ken,” the author of this interesting tutorial on tinting hot-melt adhesive sticks by adding crayons, appears to know his chemistry, but is otherwise fairly anonymous. He claims that “[y]ou can also add up to 10% by weight of paraffin wax to reduce the viscosity without sacrificing bond strength.” Looks like he used a ratio of half-a-crayon to three whole glue sticks, melted in a small tin, to achieve the vivid orange color shown in his nicely-presented phototutorial. Apart from its use as an adhesive, ethylene vinyl acetate—especially the higher-melting “industrial” formulations—can have useful structural applications. [via Hack a Day]

0 thoughts on “How-To: Custom Color Hot Glue Sticks

  1. Cora Dragut says:

    do you know if i can use 7mm diameter hot glue sticks in a gun that uses normally 11mm diameter ones? thanks!

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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