A glue gun is obviously useful for gluing things together, but it is also useful for other things, like becoming molding. 

It is a good idea to own one that does both high and low temp glue gun gluing.  Buy a quality glue gun with a very controllable trigger.  The kind where the cord is removable from the gun is useful too.  That way if you only need a little spot of glue, but you need it all the way across the room, you can remove to cord from the heated glue gun, take your spot of glue across the room and not have to worry about cords.  I use this tool for all sorts of work when I’m in a hurry.  It also is the best tool for some jobs when I’m not in a hurry.  The biggest drawback is that paint doesn’t like to stick to it, so if you use this on a surface that needs painting, you’ll need to plan for a couple days for a couple coats of gesso or acrylic dry time.

Or maybe the biggest drawback is the danger factor.  There have been a number of times when I haven’t had enough sleep and I’ve been operating a glue gun and burned myself to the point of blistering.  The worst part is that, if you get a lot of really hot glue on you, your first instinct will be to try to get it off… probably with other parts of your fingers.  Resist this urge as any body part trying to remove hot glue will also get burned and working with one burn on your fingers is hard enough. 

Another drawback is that a glue gun often leaves stringy, spider-webbish stuff hanging on your model parts.  These can be trimmed off easily with scissors.   

When using a bead as a base for an end table, but the bead does not want to stay upright, take a large, symmetrical dab of glue, put it on a piece of paper and hold the bead upright in the glue until it has cooled.  Then cut neatly around the base of the glue dot and the bead then has a base. 

Glue from a glue gun can also be used as molding in some cases.  For example, if you want a piece of half round molding to wrap around a column, for the model neatly run a bead of glue around the dowel that is becoming the column.  It’s much faster than wrapping string or wire or anything like that and trying to get it right, as long as your hand is steady while you run the glue.  If you mess up, you can always peel it off while it’s in that soft, in-between state, and try again.  You can also build up layers of glue gun glue to make larger molding.  If you try to do too much too fast, you’ll end up with a puddle of dried glue on your model, so use caution.

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