Greetings,

There is a website called www.thistothat.com that some of you may find
interesting. At the site you may select from a menu choices of materials that
you wish to adhere together, and the site presents a list of  adhesive
choices. It also covers where to buy the product as well as toxicity
information, etc. The following trivia is from the site:

The Romans used pine wood tar and beeswax as an waterproof adhesive for ship
building. Beeswax is still used today as a reliable adhesive.

The ancient occupation of the "Gold Beater" was one who flattened out gold
nuggets by hammering them in between the outside membrane of the large
intestine from an Ox (known as Goldbeater skin) to produce the gold leaf used
in decorative gilding. The adhesive used to attach this metal to paper or
plaster, in ancient times and still today, is... egg whites!

The first cyanoacrylate (super/krazy glue) was discovered by accident, when
chemists at Eastman-Kodak accidentally glued two prisms together when testing
new organic compounds for light refracting properties.

Formerly known as "ol'pile o'bones", Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada was a
large source of buffalo bones used in theproduction of animal glues. The
advancement of the railroad resulted in the slaughtering of thousands of
buffalo, and the bones were later shipped back east on the same railroad, to
be turned into glue. This type of glue has mostly been replaced with
synthetic PVAs in the domestic market. But some glues still use a combination
of animal or fish bone and PVAs.

The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a
mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.

Starch based adhesives have been used for thousands of years. Starch on its
own has no adhesive qualities. It must be boiled in water, which makes the
starch granules swell, to become gelatinous, which creates its adhesive
quality.
Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a
starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do
not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are
leaning over your morning paper.

Cellulose, the major ingredient of the cell walls of plants, is the base of
adhesives ideal for sticking plastic or glass to the cornea of the eye.
Methyl Cellulose does not irritate human tissue, which is why it is used for
this application.
Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical
binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite.

Carol Tedesco