I had a commission that required many small pieces, sterling disks
about the size of a US penny, be held nice and securely while I
"chased" a pattern into them with my rotary hammer. One might have
turned to pitch or maybe Jetset (or whatever that white stuff is
called) but I didn’t want to mess with the former and had none of the
latter so …
Out comes the hot glue gun. I have a spare (cheapo) bench block that
I cleaned with alcohol and then hot glued a disk to each corner of
it. The patterns were finished in a few minutes: the block provides a
nice solid, movable backing and the glue behind the disks served very
well as a little shock absorbing cushion for the “chasing” but …
what now?
How to get the disks off the block? They resist any force
sufficiently that I risked damaging the disks while trying to pry
them off. I used a semi-trashed dental tool that I’ve flattened the
tip of (very handy tool that). Slide it gently under the disk, deeply
piercing the hot glue pad underneath and with a bit of a wiggle the
disks popped off (be careful not to skewer yourself).
Ok so now there’s hot glue stuck to the disk and it ain’t coming off
too easy. I discovered that acetone is the cat’s PJ’s for this. Drop
the glued object into acetone for about 15 minutes. By the time the
hot glue has turned a milky looking colour it has lost it’s grab and
it just peels off effortlessly.
With this process I managed to run about a dozen disks through the
"production line" in less than 90 minutes, leaving me time to type
this up and share it with y’all. Hope it works for you too.
Cheers,
Trevor F.