Hot Glue Uses ??

I love hot glue for affixing cardboard strips as a base for mountain forms.  It dries quickly and provides plenty of tack.

Hot glue is an excellent choice for hidden, large-scale, medium-strength work where precision and neatness are not considerations. For example, it is great for glueing together slabs of pink-foam (although melting can occur), or anchoring masonite as a scenery base.  The advantage is similar to that of CA in fine work:  it dries to full-strength almost instantly, so one can work very quickly.

 

It is not impossible to use in precision situations, but it isn't easy and there are usually better choices.

has anyone used it foam board? . I'm thinking of using foamboard to start a Coal tipple, size would be approx 9" wide, 20" high. It's the 3/16 foam board. 

Howard Zane uses Hot Glue for fastening rosin paper to his diorama framework.

Then uses 100% white glue for holding the scenicing  materials [grass, scrubs, dirt, sand etc] to the rosin paper

Actually, yes.  A bead of hot glue inside the corners is not a bad way to assemble foam core walls.  In addition to being a pretty good adhesive, it also provides a fair amount of rigidity and reinforcement.   Again, though, you need to watch for melting.   Note that there are low temperature and high temperature glue guns and corresponding glue sticks.   Obviously, low-temp glue is safer on foam.

Thanks for the responses.  What I conclude is that the main advantage of hot melt glue is the fast setup & cure time compared to white glue.  Is this correct or am I missing something?

Thanks again, Tom B

My layout would fall apart without it. Get the large gun and large sticks

Agree with all the applications plus one. I also bought the W-S low temp foam hot glue gun. The standard gun melts too much foam for a secure joint. The low temp gun doesn't melt the foam at all and makes gluing up foam blocks of fastening foam to the layout a cinch. I will say to glue large areas of foam down to the plywood I'm using Loctite Insulation foam glue which comes in a caulking tube. It dries slowly, but quickly covers large areas. I found the low temp glue cools so quickly that for large surface areas the glue is hard before the entire joint properly covered with glue. There's no one perfect glue for everything that's why I probably have 10 different kinds of adhesives in use. Each type of modeling requires its own specialty adhesives to do the best job.

Boxcoupler, I believe you're right.  Don't forget that hot glue doesn't stink like rubber cement and some others, too.

Downside:  it doesn't last forever.  I used it to fasten scenery, trees, things with smaller surface areas of glue contact on my layout in an unheated out building.  After 7-8 years things started coming apart.  Maybe it would be okay in a heated location?

 

I've used it in electrical locations to keep wires in place.  Can make some great shapes quickly with cardboard.

I use it to hold the observation car deck on the Polar Express Observation car. Then, I can remove it if needed. It always falls off if not held on with something.

It sets up instantly, works great with Foam board.    Down side  ITS HOT

 

I have several hot glue guns and use them often