Gluing wood to aluminum: 4 common glues tested 

I was really surprised how well it works. The thing I didn't think about when I shot the vid was that after sanding, the dark particles from the JB weld works into the grain, which required s bit of cleanup on lighter wood.

Hi there - Just came across your comment and it sounds like your use might have been similar to mine. I getting ready to create a silver rhinestone guitar. Since my guitar is black, I'm needing to add a reflective surface behind my rhinestones to help them capture light. Looking for options better than spray paint. Would you be willing to share a bit more about your project and how you ended up applying your foil? Thanks so much!!

Glad to help. Another tip: I tested the fast set and slow set JB weld, and the slower stuff worked better in my particular case. I plan to do a steel-to-wood project in the coming months that will be taking about 120 static lbs of shear force, so I'll be sure to post some sort of video when I get to it.

Interested to see how you will apply the shear force. Do you have available a hydraulic press? You could set up a jig and use a hydraulic car jack I suppose but how will you measure the magnitude of the force? I tried to do that to check the shear strength of wood glue but had to ensure that the interface failed at the glued surfaces and nowhere else. Still thinking of doing it........Thanks again Alex.

I was thinking down the same lines, but maybe using a turnbuckle or ratcheting jig and a pull scale, or a pulley jig and weight plates

I can't remember if I ever uploaded the video about gluing fret bars onto wood... I may have just completely forgotten. ANyway, I used JB weld to glue half-round rod onto maple for ukulele frets. I scuffed up the metal pretty well to make sure it was properly keyed , and it Worked well, and im going to try it for a fanned-fret guitar in the future. I didn't do a pull-out test though, which mayle I'll do some day. One pain in the butt was that the metal particles from the JB weld for into the wood grain after sanding and it was annoying to clean up from a light colored wood like maple

I used Loctite PL Premium to glue nice plywood to moderately sanded aluminum. Enough to ooze out the edges a bit. Clamped.Cured for 3 days. Had to serious chisel to get it apart. Took the top layer off the plywood.

Probably pretty well. Many of them are polyurethane adhesives these days

@@tunapig On Loctite PL Premium I've wondered how it would perform over years in the Florida sun, wind and rain? would be awesome to skin a 2x4 structure with 5v panels without nails or screws.

Which glue is good betweem metal (ms metal) and wood and plastics

The thicker stuff forms a visible line. getting a truly invisible line is a bit tough, and it really depends on how much strength you need from the joint. You have a few options, depending on how crazy you want to go. Regular wood glue mixed with sawdust from the workpiece is an okay-ish tradeoff of strength and seam visibility, but there is water in it, so you tend to get a bit of surface swelling, which will show the seam. You can apply more clamp pressure to help that, but it will 'starve' the joint and make it weak if you clamp too hard, so if you don't mind the extra work, hollow out the face of the joint a bit in the middle (not near the surface) to make it a bit concave (just fractions of a millimeter), then clamp harder, that way the surface has an invisible seam but the inner bond if a bit stronger. You can also do the sawdust thing if you wish, and lightly sand the joint afterward to get rid of any squeeze out or surface coloration. Another option is hide-glue/clear-gelatin (which you can just get in a supermarket), which is not as strong (about 2/3 as strong as PVA wood glue) but it is easier to hide the seam. If you want to use something thicker like epoxy, I would definitely either hollow out the middle of the surface, or do a biscut joint for a good bond, and then you can leave the very extreme edges of the joint faces pretty dry/completely dry and hide the seam very well.

Thank you for the detailed reply! I'll try the hollowing method out since it seems to be the easiest way to add enough surface area without needing to approach the edges. What I'm wanting to do would be repairing and improving a broken handplane tote by trimming the break flat and then gluing in a piece of aluminum sandwiched between the two pieces and then filing/sanding it all flush.

I did try clear 5-min epoxy and JB Kwik weld after I made this video, and they hold pretty well, but not as well as the slower epoxy. The bond was still stonger than the wood, so as long as the surface is prepped well and the wood is not too oily, it should be fine. I used it to glue aluminum to wood and brass to wood, but I didn't make a video for it. I do have a video project where I used fast epoxy to glue metal rods to wood, becuse the parts were not under heavy shear stress.

HA, hey matt. No reason not to try it if you are going for a futuristic hidden screw look. But I was thinking more along the lines of a metal-wood laminate guitar... not that I would be planning a video about that...

What is the glue for larger projects. I am trying to glue a steel kitchen napkin holder to the cabinet door. Was hoping J-B weld will do the trick.

I'm not an expert, but I used to live out where a lot of big car shows happened, and think the most common thing I have seen is "amazing goop", but I have not tested it myself... worth a try. Lots of the gearheads swear by it. Something like thicker 3m VHB tape (actually acrylic adhesive on a substrate) would probably work pretty well, but it is probably more expensive.

Alex Kenis Thanks man, im gonna give the amazing goop stuff a try!

JB Weld is permanent, we had a lawn mower head that was fixed by it and still working... repair was made in the 90s.