Adam Savage's Favorite Tools: Best Hot Glue Gun!

hey Adam Savage here in my cave with a tool tip and today it's about glue

specifically of the hot variety we're going to be covering my

two favorite guns for hot glue um they use

two different kinds of glue sticks uh and the main one

that i really go for is uh this one a fasten master uh i picked

this up at uh center hardware here in san

francisco a few years ago and i really dig this thing i dig look

hot glue guns come in so many different varieties but many of them

have an attempt to keep the nose off your workbench so it doesn't burn it and

almost all of those attempts are shite almost every hot glue

gun i've ever had that has like a folding stand is shite and doesn't

work and the stand falls off and you gotta throw it away

every single one until this one this is integral it's built right in i

mean i know you can kind of pop this out if you want to but

i don't this is how i use it and i've been

beating the crap out of this thing for a long time

and it still holds up it is not cheap i will say that and i try and do tool tips

for things that are reasonably affordable for most of the viewers most

of you guys um in this regard i will say having used

40 hot glue guns over the years i really really like this one and i like the

trigger aspect because i use these long long sticks i don't have to replace them

that often um oh also it's got a switch right here

for turning it on and off it doesn't just

go on when you plug it in this is a great piece of kit

uh and come i highly recommend it on the other side of the equation well

on another facet of the equation is this

this 3m uh what do you call it scotch weld hot

melt applicator uh i got given this thing

uh by 3m a few years ago i think they sent one to frankie polito to give to me

i think that's how that worked and i got a whole bunch of these

low melt sticks and i'm here to tell you i love these low melt sticks and this

this glue gun it's missing a lot of the features of the other one it doesn't

have a trigger you got to push it with your thumb

the sticks are short you have to replace them all the time

and yet

i really like the low melt adhesive um one it operates like any other glue gun

you know you lay down a bead you stick it to the thing and you know i

i think you can prototype the whole planet in hot glue if you had enough

cardboard and glue sticks and like this is kind of

one of the ways that i think when i am mechanically problem solving stuff i cut

shapes out of foam core glued them together i pivot them i make mechanical

arrangements and hot glue gives me both a lot of

ease of trying stuff out quickly but the low melt sticks do this whole

other thing one if you get some hot glue on your finger

now the proper way to deal with it is i'm touching hot hot glue is to rub your

fingers that's absolutely one of the key ways to

stop hot glue from burning you is to start rubbing it second is to

stick it in your mouth and the water in your mouth will actually keep it from

burning you but most people don't trust me when i say that even though you just

saw me do it on camera your results may vary i'm not going to

recommend that you try and burn yourself with hot glue and then try and solve it

that would be uh don't do that don't try that at home

i think that might be the very first time i've ever said don't try that at

home untested it's kind of far out anyway

the low melt means it burns you less you have a

a little more working time weirdly it feels like but i'm not sure about that

uh but the other thing i like about the low

melt is that i can kind of you kind of take this

stuff apart a little easier than the normal hot glue

actually now it's sticking quite well um that

for prototyping is really really great um

there's a a a resiliency to these glue sticks that i dig

hot glue is pretty self-similar like i haven't

determined a huge variance except in terms of temperature

and i know i know yeah i'm totally aware that there are like a million varieties

like there's more types of hot glue than there are

flavors of bundaberg beer i don't know all those flavors i know

what i use which is these low melt sticks

these clear sticks and the other hot glue gun and

while neither of these is a super entry-level tool

they are both um they have both survived years of abuse here

in the cave and they come with my highest recommendation

thank you guys for joining me uh for this tool tip and

if you have an entry-level hot glue gun that you have found to be

robust and uh and excellent i would like to know about it i

i want to point out why it's important that hot glue guns

have uh a stand that holds them up like this because the cheap hot glue guns

look what's happening in hot glue gun is there's a heating element up here and as

the hot glue gets near it it melts and it comes out as a liquid

obvi with a lot of the lower cost versions of hot glue guns the stand

falls off and everyone starts laying the hot glue gun down like this and hot glue

eventually starts to just like seep out and they just start to deteriorate it's

just it's terrible terrible situation um so if you've got an

entry-level hot glue gun that you have found survives the kind of

abuse your average theater person would put it through i'd

like to know about it uh links to these will be in the

comments below thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip

i'll see you next time