Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Glueing plywood to rubber?
Ernie Miller Topeka
>Does any one know what is the best glue to glue rubber to plywood? I have a stach of vintage herman miller chairs that have rubber bushings that hold the plywood seats and backs to the classic metal frames some of the backs have came loose and need put back on. I don't know what to use for the glue. They have some pressure put on them when you move as the rubber bushing gives.
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Steve Kubien
>I have had decent success with contact cement between rubber like stuff and wood. I do not know how good it would be with the stress a chair faces.
Steve Kubien
Ajax, Ontario
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Alan Hamilton
>Ernie,
I have glued rubber to both wood and steel with contact cement. For my uses, where the rubber wasn't stretched, it worked great.
Alan
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Dave Anderson Chester, NH
>Hi Ernie- Fastbond 150 is a water based neoprene contact cement and works well bonding rubber. Alternately and perhaps more readily available are Barge and Pliobond, contact adhesives designed for bonding rubber. You should be able to either at your local hardware store.
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Sgian Dubh
>Impact glue or contact cement won't work for the application Ernie is asking about guys and gals.
He's looking for a solution to Charles and Ray Eames chairs from about the 1950's broken at the shock mount-- a common failure in their designs.
I've already pointed him in the right direction over at the main forum as I'm more than familiar with how this type of chair was, and is, put together. Slainte.
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Will Tracey
>If the rubber that you have on your chairs is similar to the material that Eames used, your problem may not be adhesive. The rubbers that they were using as shock mounts were early incarnations of neoprene. Neoprene was a product that Ray and Charles learned about while producing moulded plywood products for the military did during WWII. At wars end they were given access to the material for commercial application, but its hasty development for wartime use meant that it was fraught with the problems of expedited engineering. For this reason the rubber mounts were glued and always used in combination with screws passing through a metal tube in their center into the plywood. I think that your best bet would be to contact Herman Miller and seek out their advice. These connections are notorious for failing, and it is likely that there is someone there who could direct you towards a solution.
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Sgian Dubh
>Will, Herman Millers solution in Michigan is to send the whole caboodle to them and they'll fix it for a couple or three thousand dollars.
They are extremely secretive about their 'exclusive' techniques and processes-- which aren't at all mysterious really.
But their service and spare parts policy on the other hand is one of extracting the maximum amount of money for the least amount of service-- there's an expensive kudos with dealing with a Herman Miller made Eames. It's like owning a Rolls Royce-- you just pay and don't ask how much.
I know this because I tried two or three times to find economical solutions to broken Eames chairs through Herman Miller. Herman Miller don't offer economical solutions to anything.
Their Eames chair may have broken again, but they don't tell you to just slap a bit of epoxy on the thing and glue it all back together, which is essentially what you do, plus a bit of fakery on the polishing front, ha, ha.
Their repair solution is to have the broken item sent to them, they supply new parts to bolt on to the old part, and the new parts and labour are priced at a premium, which is fine if you can get away with it as they do. Slainte.
Re: Glueing plywood to rubber?
Howard
>I've had excellent results with polyurethane caulking.
Howard
Goop?
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>My local hardware store sells something called "Goop," which is a water-based rubbery adhesive that seems to stick to anything and is flexible afterward.
5200
Bob Hackett
>It`s a marine adhesive,comes in clear,black,white and other colors.It`s the greatest tool in any hack joiner`s kit and the bane of all good craftsmen.
This stuff sticks to just about any clean surface and then the parts will have to be either heated or cut to get them apart.Great when you`re doing a quick and dirty fix,hell if you`re taking that fix apart.
If it works on boats...
Mainely,Bob