Imperial Creative Engineering > Resources and References

Hot glue tricks

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DocOutlands:
Thanks to Narceron, we have:

http://www.joecustoms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12821&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=hot+glue+lightening

Narce - you mentioned vaseline & neck adapters?  I didn't see any mention of it in that joecustoms thread.  Cough up some more info, man!!

BTW - hot glue WILL stick to aluminum foil!  But Darko advocates a really cool gun/glue, ie: unplugging the gun routinely to keep the glue thick.  Once I get my desk cleared, I'm going to have another go at my Cmdr Faie hoods.  I really feel I'm heading the right way with them and hot glue.

Tamer:
Look at this electricity trick using hotglue. This Darko seems like a genius.

http://www.joecustoms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12821&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=hot+glue+lightening&sid=28bf86ba7c339583ec25c6df0d9f8cef&start=15

narceron:
Justin (darko) is an incredibly talented customizer and a super nice guy to boot.

If you run into him on the boards, pick his brain, he has a ton of things in his bag of tricks.  My favorite might be his bumblebee battle armor, or his cobra la adaptations, :)

Clonehead:
That much is apparant. I would like to talk to him and would like it if he were to pay us a visit, here.

Darko:
Genius is overselling me quite a bit. Glue-sniffer comes closer. Glad the glue-trick has fans across customizing communities, though. Never really done a lot of SW customizing myself (really, the only ones I've done are this Mara Jade and an articulation-add to Darth Talon), but Narceron let me know about this place at about the same time DocOutlands contacted me at Trigate. Some things I've learned since I first posted that tutorial:

-It does kind of matter what hotglue you use. I think, actually, that the lower-quality ones work best (they stick to the foil least). Superbonder all-temperature glue sticks (which you can get at Michaels) are what I use primarily.

-If you're having trouble making it work with foil, try either Reynold's Release (non-stick) foil, or you can use vaseline/chapstick instead.  And yeah, low, low temp is the key.

As far as the head-socket modification, I can't take credit for that one (but I forget who DID introduce me to the technique), but basically

-Coat the neck-peg of the figure you're using with vaseline/chapstick
-Take the head you want to adapt and put a small glob of hotglue in the socket
-IMMEDIATELY press the head onto the neck-peg until it's sitting where you want it (if the peg is just too wide instead of both too deep and too wide, you may need to dremel it a bit deeper prior to using this trick so you're custom won't have giraffe neck) and then move it around in all directions.
-Let the glue cool, trim any glue-flash, and you're done.

Hotglue is incredibly versatile. Since I posted my tutorials, I've seen people make energy portals and even hair out of it. It also makes good slime/ooze or lava. The last thing I did with it was awhile back, when I made this flame-stand (I was getting tired of trying to hunt down those Boba Fetts)

If I had it to do over again, I'd have used less black and more orange, but I wanted a really dirty looking flame-cloud. Basically, to do that, I took a big lump of foil molded onto a GI Joe figure stand (the new style), ran two plastic poles through the foil-lump, and then coated it with hot glue (similar to how I did in the tutorial there). To make it fit the jetpack, I pretty much did the same thing as I explained above to make heads fit, just with the jet-holes instead of a neck-socket.

I've never tried making clothing/accessories out of it, but in theory it should work. I did manage to use it as a casting medium (using some alumilite molds I had laying around). It works alright (unlike the effects, the key is to get the glue as hot as possible), but definitely doesn't capture the same detail level as resin (...and, of course, the parts are rubbery, and might get a bit tacky in super-hot weather).

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I love seeing what people can come up with using these tricks.

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