Did you ever assemble model cars as a kid? Well, this isn't anything like that. 

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For one thing, the glue is stronger. I mean a lot stronger. I learned this when I started talking to some very smart people at 3M about structural adhesives. I also learned that people use these to assemble the life-sized vehicles that we drive every day. That's pretty amazing.

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Here is what else I learned: there's quite a bit of chemistry involved in structural adhesives.

 

I did not exactly specialize in chemistry in school. But I must have adjusted pretty well, because I wrote all about the benefits of structural adhesives in collision repair. I must have done well there, because afterwards I "graduated' to writing about structural adhesives for automotive  OEM. It turns out I'm a lot better at this than I am at assembling scale models...