After making a test joint with Haribo Gummy Bears, I let it sit overnight then subjected the joint to all sorts of abuse with a nail hammer. The joint held as well as any joint I've made. And the red squeeze-out had turned from a jelly to rock hard.
So Megan Fitzpatrick agreed to a real-world test: Gluing up a Dutch tool chest with Gummy Glue. I bought some less expensive gummy worms (59 cents) at the gas station up the block (I also got some lovely Indian food there). I melted the worms into the goo left from the bears and added a bit of water until the mixture was like good hot hide glue.
Together, Megan and I glued up the carcase. I was a little worried we would run out of glue because Roy Underhill and the other students kept sampling it.
Bam, bam, bam. And the case went together. We put clamps on it and let it sit.
Some observations: the stuff sets up slower than traditional hot hide. It took an hour for the gummy squeeze-out to gel to the same point where the hot hide gets in 30 minutes.
But after sitting overnight, the gummy stuff was hard as glass.
After posting our original experiment here and on Instagram, we got a lot of comments saying things like: The glue won't hold. It will only last a couple seasons of moisture exchange. You'll get ants. Bugs will eat the glue.
To all this I say: Shut up. You don't know. You just love to hear your tongue rattle in your cake hole.
The finished tool chest is now owned by Roy. He's going to fill it with his favorite tools and leave it to his daughters. If you really want to know how the glue fared, ask them in 50 years.
— Christopher Schwarz
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