For me, glue is usually not a top priority, which is why when my partner, Richard, gave me a beautiful cutting board he made – hard, shoot-through oriental maple with the purple veins of the African rice – I thought the plant must have grown in incredibly complicated ways I hadn’t noticed. It was only when I heard him and his woodworkers talk about “adhesives” that I realized that a strong adhesive has to do with the blending of woods, and the magic. of the substance is greatly reduced when we call it by the name best used for Elmer’s.
Wood glue – again without fanfare – has turned into extraterrestrials. There are names associated with radicalism in adhesives: Mildred Bonney and Langdon T. Williams, the couple who founded the adhesive company Franklin International in 1935 in Columbus, Ohio, which released it. its flagship product, Titebond, in 1955. Titebond is a polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue. It swells the wood grains, letting them blend together; as the glue dries, the fibers shrink back to their normal size, but now they’re so entangled that the bond is virtually unbreakable.
While some luthiers still use animal glue when they build stringed instruments—yes, animal skins—most woodworkers have turned to PVA, and especially Titebond . admits that some experts are skeptical. It also has a great “open time”, which means it stays glued and won’t dry even if you dither your wood arrangement for 10 minutes. Titebond II gives you just five.
But the real breakthrough with all Titebonds, of course, is alignment. How much cleavage, compression, bending, impact, tension or shear is required to break the plane of the Titebond bond? This is measured in pounds per square inch, and the Titebond III takes up to 4,000 lbs to break. Two scary tons. Hardwood will break before this glue.
From glue to lashes. And while old-fashioned false lashes require glue, it’s much weaker than Titebond — and that’s enough thinking about sealed eyelids. New in the eyelashes is a synthetic prostaglandin analog called a bioreactor. (A synthetic prostaglandin analog is also the active ingredient in misoprostol, one of the pills approved for self-administered abortion.) Where chemical engineers can explain how the ultrasound machine and PVA glue work. In action, bimatoprost is a happy accident and something of a mystery. Essentially, ophthalmologists worked to reduce the pressure in the eyes of glaucoma patients, and they discovered that the bioplastic dilates the ciliary body — the nervous muscle in the eye that normally contracts when they we read on a smartphone — this causes the discharge of fluid inside the eye. They were surprised to discover that the movement of this plasma-like liquid also acts as a Miracle-Gro for the eyelashes.
Since the invention of technology that can grow human hair seems to be the highest aspiration of mankind, it is quite a thrill. “Hypotrichosis” or what the National Institutes of Health calls “insufficient eyelash count,” is a treatment for hair loss disorders, which can occur in people with alopecia areata, but is of course suitable. This substance has many more useless applications. Interestingly, biocatalysts can even cause hirsutism – overgrown eyelashes, creating a thick and lush rim on the eyes, preventing the need for a thick coat of mascara. “These hairs,” the NIH study said, “have a sturdier appearance, are longer, thicker, and more deeply pigmented, and grow at a more pronounced angle from the skin than in the control eye.” Catch single? Hirsutism caused by bioplastics is sometimes accompanied by “irregular lash curl”. OH NO.
