Oh man, "slapping the glue straight onto the board" - I felt that in my soul. I was doing the same thing for like a year and a half with my sketchbook covers, just frustrated why the paper always buckled or peeled up at the edges. It wasn't until I watched a bookbinder on YouTube mention letting the glue soak into the paper for a full minute that everything clicked for me. Now I brush it on, wait, and the paper just melts into place without any bubbles or curling. It's one of those little tweaks that makes you feel both stupid and brilliant at the same time, you know?

Three kids deep here, I feel your pain on anything that cuts prep time.

Nah actually I found two issues I already owned and rebought by mistake.

Nah, I gotta disagree with you there. 300 real signups from a single post with zero hard sell is a solid result, not a fluke. Most people are drowning in noise from short form video and never build a list at all. A plain text post that actually solves a problem is way more valuable than a viral reel that gets views but no emails. If those 300 people signed up willingly without being begged, they're way more likely to open the next email than someone who clicked a popup ad.

Jumped right into that same trap on an '01 Corolla last fall. I had the slide hammer set up perfect and the metal just turned to dust, like grabbing a handful of salt. Ended up cutting out a two-foot section and welding in a patch from a parts car. That's the thing with Toyota undercoating from that era, it hides the cancer until you put force on it.