Gluing fabric to aluminum shield - what glue & application?

[twoswords]

What glue works best and how best to apply it? The shield is aircraft aluminum. I assume I have to scratch up the surface first to make it hodl on to the fabric better?

Imagine you would be talking to a 2 year old on crack. This is about my knowledge level for this particular issue.

[Alex Baird]

Glueing fabric to wood, leather to plastic, and foam to metal, I have had good success with DAP contact adhesive, such as is used to glue laminate to countertops. It will retain some flex after drying.

Scuff up the metal with sandpaper, coat both surfaces (fabric and shield) and allow to dry to a tacky surface, then CAREFULLY roll the fabric onto the metal. Once it touches, it is stuck. Might take more than one person to do.

[Broadway]

I have had very good results with wood glue (tightbond II), and simple white elmers glue.

Bad results with: Gorrilla glue, and 3M adhesive spray.

I use canvas painters drop sheets that you can buy from lowes.

[Glaukos the Athenian]

This

http://images.lowes.com/product/convert ... 1378xl.jpg

has worked very well for me. (sorry Dante) the trick is washing the fabric/canvas before to remove the chemicals they put to keep the fabric clean. Then you iron it to make it smooth. Perfect finish every time I have used, which is for every shield I have made....

[Broadway]

I'm of the opinion that that 3M spray sucks donkey balls Glaukos.

I keep the can around for things that I'm gonna glue together that I'll eventually want to take apart again... cause it sucks.

Your mileage obviously varies...

[Milan H]

I recently did some informal testing on this very subject.

Aluminum shield 6061-t6, canvas drop cloth that was washed, dried and ironed flat. Small equal size swatches were made and glued to a surface that was scuffed with 120 grit sand paper & cleaned very well with acetone (until paper towels were wiping away clean.) Glues used; Barge Contact cement, Dap contact cement, titebond 2, and 3m super 77 each applied according to directions on the label, except the titebond where I followed archivers advice.

After everything dried completely, I peeled the swatches off.

Highest bond strength to weakest... Barge, Dap, super 77, titebond. Barge was very strong holding, with dap clearly second. The super 77 wasnt bad, but not fantastic. The titebond was not very strong at all. The disparity between 1 and 4 is hard to describe except as tremendous. The Barge took significant effort to peel off, while the titebond took little effort at all. If I were to rate effort to peel from 1-10, where 10 is I need tools to peel it off, and 1 is barely sticking, Barge was a 9, dap a 7.5, super 77 a 5 and titebond a 2.

Again this was not scientific, but its what I found empirically. I went with Dap myself as it was strong, but much cheaper than barge. Great bang for your buck in this case.

Cheers!

[Corby de la Flamme]

I use super 77 and can't complain. Canvas on an aluminum shield is not going to pull up, it is going to get beaten into nothing.

I just peeled the canvas off an aluminum blank this weekend. It was in tatters all along the front and top edge, yet tight and stuck down everywhere else.

The advantages of super 77: fast application, easily strips off when you want to recover it. I peeled the 2 year old canvas off in 3 minutes. I've reapplied new canvas in 10 minutes.

Note: I am not using a typical thin aluminum shield blank. The blank I have is 1/4" thick with a rolled edge. I understand it originally was a piece of an auxilliary fuel tank for an air force jet.

[Amanda M]

I used 3m adhesive spray and had no problems with it personally. When I did Malcolm the Bold's shield the last time I used spray glue in large amounts, but then coated it in a TON of paint, then sealed it with at least one entire can of spray lacquer. The edges are the places where it's been torn up the worst. It was a Windrose shield that I did absolutely nothing to before gluing the fabric on so YMMV.

[Glaukos the Athenian]

D. Sebastian suggests to sand lightly the surface of a new shield, to give the adhesive a better grip on the metal.

[AndreasMorgan]

I personally use DAP contact cement. Never really prepped the aluminum before glueing. The biggest thing I can say about the glueing process is that it is imperative to follow the instructions on the can concerning the wait time before putting the two materials together. It makes a huge difference. Also, I keep a squeegee or flexible plastic putty knife on hand to smooth out any air bubbles.

Cheers,
Andreas

[kenrickb]

Considering that at some point you're going to want to replace the canvas, I'm not sure the strongest bond is necessarily what you'd be looking for. On the shield I just stripped last weekend, I took over half an hour just tearing the canvas off. I believe I used contact cement on that one. I'm going with D's idea of wood glue this time, especially since I know I'll have to redo it again right after the war. I like the idea of using spray adhesive since it sounds like it holds fairly well yet not so well as to be a major PITA when I want to take it off.

Kenric, East

[Amanda M]

For what it's worth, I also cover the back of the shield with felt and the same spray adhesive. It's possible the tons of layers of paint, then lacquer, and the covering of all exposed edges, contributes to greater durability. With just the gold background behind St. George Michael on Mal's shield, there's at least 4 layers there.

[Tomburr]

For lining the back of the shield with felt, 3M Super 77 worked well. Since the front will probably only be semi-permanent, it may be a good choice for that, too.

[Alex Baird]

Also, for those that like 3M "77", is that you can get "90", which is a higher bond. (also 75, which is repositionable)

[BdeB]

3m Super 77. The 99 is too much. Perhaps, maybe manly enough for the Tiger Blood of Dante dela Lunnasheen.

[Broadway]

Winning!

[BdeB]

Sheenaluna! Danta Sheenaluna! SORRY EVERYONE! SORRY!

[Malek]

I do things 2 ways.
Gluing fabric to the backside that is not as likely to take a beating - Super 77 on both the aluminum and the fabric (duck canvas in this case)

For the front - DAP contact cement right on the aluminum, Super 77 on the canvas going on to it (Home Depot painters canvas). The mix of the 2 glues seems to be complimentary and holds tight, but releases under a heat gun.

Getting the wife's new heater glued up tonight, then gesso and artwork time for the rest of the week.

[Amanda M]

The only thing I hate about those painter's canvases is the ones at my Home Depot have plastic on one side. I started just getting muslin by the yard at Wal Mart instead. I had trouble with the plastic preventing good paint saturation.