Gorilla Glue is amazing

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

And no, they did not pay me to say this. Chance would be a fine thing.

At the GARDEN PRESS EVENT 2014 I got a bottle of this glue – and yes, that event is a while back now – and I already have used it for repairing the handle of an old garden trowel, together with some sugru®, to great effect.

The other day I bought a set of 12 wood carving chisels from Lidl and with one of them the blade had come out of the handle. I know, I should have gone back and exchanged it, in all reality, but decided that I could not bother to make the trip to the store again and thought I would fix it myself.

The first thought, as it would be a case of bonding metal (the tang of the chisel blade) to wood (the inside of the handle), to use “superglue” but as I would have had to use a whole tube at a cost of somewhere in the region of £3 I decided to give Gorilla glue another try instead. And, well, it worked. The blade appears to be very solid now in the handle.

I hasten to add that I have not used the chisel – as yet – on a lathe where the vibrations might be a different kettle of fish and neither do I use a lathe. But the blade appears to be very much set in the handle now with the resin of the glue.

Not knowing what chemicals actually make up the Gorilla glue I can't directly say how green or not it may be but it can fix things and that is one of the points I want to make here.

Fixing with glue – whatever kind – is often very green indeed regardless of what the glue's components may be. Here, I know, it was a case of fixing something that should not have been “broken” in the first place but returning the entire case would have meant, and I know that for certain, that Lidl would have just thrown the case, with the tools away, after issuing me with a replacement.

I encountered that a few times now such as with a small shortwave radio receiver where the mains adapter burned out after a short while and, instead of sending a new adapter it was cheaper for them to send an entire new boxed radio with adapter and telling me to keep the other radio also.

Waste is created in our society on so many levels that repair even in this case of the chisel was the greener option than a return for replacement. Thus, thanks to Gorilla glue and a wait of about 24 hours at least something was, once again, kept out of the waste stream and, probably, the landfill.

© 2014

Old garden tools need not to be thrown

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Old garden tools are, in many instances, better than new ones and even if a handle is no longer, even for a trowel, in the best of states there are ways of rescuing them.

This I did recently with a very old garden trowel were the top of the handle had a rather large crack in it and also where at other places the wood was a little, or a little more even, rough and cracked.

Initially I tried to use sugru to fill the crack of the handle and then cap it with the same material but, alas, because of the state of the crack this did not work. So a couple of experiments later I filled it with Gorilla Glue and this entirely repaired the crack and, as the glue hardens to such an extent that it can also be sanded the handle was almost as good as new at that area. I could, I know, have used the traditional method of repairing cracks in wood, such as wood glue mixed with sawdust but I neither had sawdust not wood glue to hand.

Then came sugru into use as a cap over the crack and at the bottom end where the trowel is fitted into the handle and, voila, it is, once again, a useable trowel that is also safe for the hands of the user.

Often all it takes to make an old handle useable again and safe so as not to end up with splinters is to sand it down and wax or oil lit but applying sugru at certain points makes it still better and, at the same time, makes it look a little more colorful and that way it can also be spotted easier when put down.

I could have added also, as the picture below shows, grip improvements but am quite happy with the way it is as it is now though.

I am sure I will find some more tools to repair and improve with use of sugru (and by other means) as there is really no need, in most cases, to ditch those old tools for new ones; none whatsoever.

Old tools often are much better quality and better design than many of the cheap and cheerful modern ones; and the cheap is in quality only and not in price more often than not.

© 2014