UHMW film

Rating: ***** (out of five stars possible)

"UHMW" stands for Ultra High Molecular Weight. It is a plastic sold as blocks, thin film in rolls and sheets or as an approximately 1mm thick film in rolls. The material is very slick. It extremely durable and 100% resistant to all adhesives appropriate for use on guitars, including epoxy. So why am I reviewing and recommending such a thing? Applied to small pieces of 1/4 and 1/2-inch plywood and solid hardwood blocks, the film makes excellent clamp pads and blocks. When you need to glue anything to any other thing, a big problem is glue squeeze out during the clamping. And you can’t just clamp directly on the top, back or side wood. That produces unwanted dents. For example, say you need to glue a reinforcing patch to a back panel. You can make small clamp pads out of 1/4-inch plywood with UHMW film on one side. The resulting clamp pad will not stick where the extra glue squeezes out. You will find this plastic useful in all sorts of repair tasks. The 1mm self-adhesive plastic in rolls the most useful. I have a box of 50-60 clamp pads in varying shapes and sizes ready for any clamping task.

CA glue will stick to UHMW if there is enough file area to make adhesion. Small bits won't.