Digital Making | Material Joinery 2
Continuing on from my last post, i mentioned alternate methods of bonding latex to itself. The results of those methods are as follows:
Citric Acid
This method simply involved applying citric acid to the latex, which in theory, brings it to a state where the surface becomes tacky and the two pieces should then bond together.
Two strips of latex were placed on either side of the seam. Lemon juice was painted on as a source of citric acid and then left to dry.
While the two pieces did indeed bond together, as soon as i tried to stretch the two the bond gave way immediately. I had high hopes for this method but unfortunately it has produces one of the worst results so far.
Contact Adhesive
Next up was contact adhesive, in this case a can of spray on adhesive. Much like with the citric acid, two strips were sprayed with the adhesive and laid over the seam.
An interesting side affect to note was that once the latex was sprayed with the adhesive, it began to curl up into a convex form. This is the reason why the pieces aren’t perfectly laid flat.
The two pieces once again bonded together just fine. It wasn’t until the testing that the bond began to fail.
At first, the adhesive was holding up. The more the latex was stretched, the more you could hear the adhesive loosening to the point where it finally gave way whilst i was about to take this photo. The two pieces stretched approximately 80–100mm before failing.
Conclusion
To sum things up, the methods tested arguably all failed. Some withstood the tension up till a certain distance then proceeded to fail. If there is only going to be light tension then some of the above methods will be applicable, however none would account for a person accidentally tripping and putting their arm through the latex skin.
In Sarah’s last post, she mentioned using patterns for the structure of the latex. If that is the case then our attention can turn to joining the latex to said patterns then the patterns to each other, rather than having to worry about joining latex to latex. Then in theory should a section of the latex becomes damaged, it would be a matter of removing that patterned piece and replacing it with another.
