Gorilla glue versus epoxy

[dickbrom]

I have heard of using Gorilla Glue (and pins) for fastening scales to a blade or attaching a hidden tang blade into a wood handle . 

I would appreciate hearing the pros and cons of using this method.  Preferably from bladesmiths who have used this method. 

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[Gary Mulkey]

I wouldn't recommend the Gorilla Glue.  It's a urethane type glue and does a lot  of expanding as it cures which isn't ideal for knife handles.  A slow  cure epoxy is much better.  I use only AcraGlas from Brownell's.

[Gerald Boggs]

I think you might have so trouble finding smiths that have gone the route of Gorrilla glue. 

[Cody Killgore]

Yeah, I've never used gorilla glue on a knife handle, but I used to use it glueing up the brass tube inside of pen turning blanks. I had some issues with it not holding the brass tube in there well enough and eventually moved to epoxy even for that. I've not really used gorilla glue since.

Acraglas or GFlex are kinda the king when it comes to knife handle epoxies.

[Forest Xavier]

Gorilla glue works well for certain things but absolutely piss poor for others, for porous materials (wood, cloth, some foams) it works fantastic as the expansion of the glue actually seeps into the material you are glueing, that’s why wetting the wood (in the directions of you read them) actually allows the glue to do that.  Now with non porous materials is bonds very poorly and sheers very easily off the materials, an example is that I used some gorilla glue to mount a ceramic plate onto a metal mounting bracket for a bird feeder, well it lasted a year and then wind storm hit and off flew the plate.  It will bind to metal but poorly.  However on that same project the stake to hold said bird feeder was a copper pipe and to make it more ridged I glued a dowel down the center, the gorilla glue is still holding fine, but that also has very low strain on it as well.  Also if by chance anyone has seen the “overflow” from curing you will notice it is full of air gaps and hollows as it forms a foam...this foam is the same thing that would happen in a tang with any gaps and that foam is fairly easy to crush so I bet with time and use the tang would loosen up quite badly.  Gorilla glue isn’t a bad product but also it’s not as versatile as it states binding of material that is porous and can be clamped with very minimal to no gaps I’d use it all day...anything else use another product if it needs to hold long...just my humble opinion and observations