Originally Posted by
ignatz
The professor who taught the course in jewelery making I took in college said that when one used only glue when affixing metal to some dissimilar material (wood, plastic, etc.) it would only be a matter of time before the join gave out and the two pieces parted ways. His advice was to always have some sort of a mechanical join to reinforce the glue join. Therefore, since those prongs already exist I for one would choose to take advantage of them and try to use them in the same way on your new scales as they have been employed for fastening the inlays to the old.
Glue + mechanical join = secure fastening :)
Glue alone = :confused:
By the way, it is a shame about those original scales. Judging from your photographs I would say that those were very elegant when new.