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Need some help!

Hello all
I'm new here so my apologies if this isn't something to post here or the wrong place. :/
I'm looking to find the best adhesive for gluing all of my specimens to decorative papered shadow boxes that I make.
Butterflies, beetles, moths, etc. will be glued onto card stock, metal and more.
I've had many people say elmer's glue or hot glue, but then other's say it wont hold up. And I'm really trying not to use E6000 if possible.
I need something very strong that will hold up as I definitely don't want them to fall apart over time!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

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Contributed by moonbug on 15 April, 2019 - 12:30am

clear nail polish

Whatever glue you use, it will be very much stronger than the insect parts themselves that it is glued too. This means you want to adhere to a significant surface area (~10%) of the underside of the bug, not just the legs (which may just break off). You don't want the glue to be too conspicuous, though, so a clear glue is best. Before the availability of specialized insect adhesives (from Bioquip, for example), entomologists just used clear nail polish to point mount and repair insects. May sure it soaks into both insect and (porous) surface.

… Edward L. Ruden, 17 April, 2019 - 8:22am

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are you doing this

for artworks? if it was, I'd probably use epoxy, but as Edward stated, the weakest link will be the insect itself..

… Guy A. Hanley, 17 April, 2019 - 12:44pm

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Epoxy

Epoxy comes in a wide variety of viscosities (firm clay to thin syrup), cure times (minutes to 24 hours) and colors (nearly transparent when cured to entirely opaque).

Another alternative is super glue (cyanoacrylate), which is also available in several viscosities. It is nearly transparent after hardening. You can get kits with a spray bottle of (nearly instant) hardener. OTOH, if you touch it, it'll adhere to your skin and harden almost instantly.

The traditional way of doing what you want is embedding the whole insect in plastic that starts out liquid and ends up brittle. But it'd be nearly impossible to avoid air bubbles.

… Stephen Hart, 18 April, 2019 - 7:00pm

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