Fight me on this: Dollar store super glue is way better than the expensive stuff for most repairs

Okay so I keep seeing people in here raving about using name brand glues for their dollar store builds and I'm like... why? I fixed a broken garden gnome with a $1.25 tube of the off-brand stuff from Dollar Tree last month and it's been sitting out in the rain for 3 weeks now and it's still solid. Meanwhile my buddy spent $8 on Gorilla Glue for a cracked flower pot and it failed after one freeze. But I also get that some people say the cheap stuff dries too brittle or takes forever to set. My question is: what's your actual experience with the dollar store super glue vs the expensive kind? Have you had it fail in a way that made you regret going cheap or am I just lucky so far?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.emma24d ago

Your garden gnome test is solid proof honestly. Ngl the dollar store stuff works great for non-structural stuff like that. But here's the thing though, the expensive glues usually have different chemical formulas. Gorilla Glue for example is a polyurethane glue that needs moisture to cure, so if your buddy's pot was bone dry when he glued it, that's why it failed not the glue's fault. The cheap cyanoacrylate glues dry rock hard and don't flex at all, so on anything that sees temp changes or vibration they'll just snap clean off. I've had it happen with a broken plastic chair leg where the dollar glue held for a week then popped right off, but the name brand stuff lasted months.

ryanburns24d ago

@kim.emma 100% correct about the moisture thing lol