New Water-Based Contact Cement From Tandy

[ChuckBurrows]

Barge has also recently developed a very low VOC contact cement - see their website....

[steelhawk]

Weldwood has a water based contact cement product but I haven't tried it. The local hardware store only has the one quart can and I haven't wanted to spend the money to get something that might not work. I've asked before, and no one here has used it.

[particle]

Okay - I haven't tried any of the other alternatives mentioned in this thread yet. But, I wanted to share my current experience with the Tandy EcoWeld Water Based Contact Adhesive.

Bonding strength seems very good. My gut feeling is that it doesn't stiffen the leather quite as much as Barges does, but I can't prove that.

It's easy to apply and spread - it brushes on the leather much easier than the Barges contact cement I was previously using. It doesn't take terribly long to dry, so application time is almost a good as the solvent-based cements, provided you don't brush it on too thick. Since it goes on thin, the product seems to last longer than an equal quantity of Barges.

Now, here's the interesting part that I'm hoping some of our overseas friends can help with (apparently it's been in use for a while overseas and just recently made it to the US)...

When I purchased the cement, I poured some of it into the plastic dispenser that Tandy sells that has the adjustable brush built into the screw-on lid. I kept this dispenser and the original container in my garage, right next to each other. My garage is insulated, so it hasn't gotten excessively hot - probably never above 95 degrees. After a couple weeks, the dispenser cement started smelling sour, while the original container smelled fine. About a month after initially pouring it into the dispenser, the dispenser cement smelled so bad I almost thew up... I ended up pouring about half a pint down the drain... The original container still smells fine. From now on, I'll only pour a tiny bit into the dispenser, then rinse it out when I'm done. I'm not sure what this stuff is made of, or what made it go sour. Interestingly, even though it stunk so badly, it still worked just fine - the goes almost entirely away once it dries.

Does anyone know what would cause the stuff to go sour? Could it be a combination of the dispenser brush being in the humid/damp environment (from the water-based cement) that caused the brush to mildew, which introduced mold into the cement? I'm grasping for straws - if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear it.