Tool: Black Hot Melt Glue Sticks
https://amzn.to/2xzt2jX

Related tools mentioned:

Surebonder PRO2-100 100-Watt High Temperature Industrial Glue Gun
https://amzn.to/2LOprSg

Transcript:

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This time I’m going to show you guys black hot glue sticks. A pack of these cost me $8 on Amazon. I’m going to show you why they’re useful. And if you want to pick some up, using the Amazon link in the description helps support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Hot glue is a quick and sturdy way to join things together. For electronic projects, hot glue is also an easy way to mount LEDs or project boards in an enclosure.

But with traditional hot glue, the end result sorta looks like you’ve stuck things together with snot.

Black glue sticks have two things going for it. One, it avoids looking like hot glue. Especially in a black enclosure, it blends in a little better.

Two, as a more practical advantage, it blocks out light leaks. So it you’re mounting an LED and don’t want to see a halo around the hole it’s in, a few globs of this will hold your LED in place and seal in the light.

Now, there are downsides to this glue. This stuff in particular is a half-inch type stick, so it won’t work in smaller craft glue guns. Though, I suspect there’s smaller versions out there.

But the biggest downside is that it will stain the inside of your glue gun. Once you put a stick of this stuff in your gun, if you switch back you’re going to be making swirly, gray glue blobs for a long time before the black clears out.

At this point I’ve just committed one of my glue guns to use black hot glue. I keep it at my electronics workbench and find it pretty handy.

You can use the link in the description to pick some up for yourself, and you can see thousands of reader recommended tools like these at Cool-Tools.org.

Find more Cool Tool reviews here:
http://kk.org/cooltools