What Adhesive Would You Use to...

[Jerry1]

I could do that, but I think the badge adds some value if/when I were to sell the house.

At 12 years old, that refrigerator is something you’d end up throwing in so you don’t have to haul it off. I’m thinking the cost of the tape is more than the badge is worth in additional resale value unless there’s a mark that the badge made that can’t be cleaned off and needs to be covered back up by resetting the badge.

Sounds more like you have a restoration gene in you.

 

[Odduck]

Goop or E6000 is a pretty good bet for those sorts of odd surfaces. Clean them first, no matter what you use and try to rough up and remove any old adhesive. An amazing adhesive on difficult surfaces is CA ("superglue") with either baking soda applied first through the joint or graphite or a mixture of both. Graphite will slow down the cure and make a wickedly strong joint. I love keeping old stuff looking like new.

 

[Major Tom]

Like others, I would use double-sided adhesive tape. Also like a few others, my tape of choice for these sorts of things is 3M VHB tape.

 

[VanWinkle]

E6000 will do the trick. You'll never go back to regular glue.

 

[SecondAttempt]

Great ideas!

I should mention that we use an aerosol spray stainless steel cleaner/polish product to clean our stainless steel appliances. This stuff has some sort of petroleum product in it, I'm guessing a very light oil and /or possibly a solvent like acetone. I'm wondering if repeated uses of this cleaner weakened the adhesive or if the adhesive simply dried up with age causing the logo badge to fall off.

Anyway, I'm leaning toward the double sticky tape since I don't have any and I might find other uses for it in the future. Otherwise, I'd probably try contact cement or JB Weld, since I already them.

Stainless steel cleaner is basically WD-40 which is basically baby oil. Look it up. It was developed in the 1960s to keep missiles from rusting before launch. Someone noticed that babies don't rust and tried baby oil...of course that was too simple for a military contract so additives were added.