Determining the initiation of adhesive failure at a surface buried deep within the bulk of an epoxy is qualitatively different from measuring the propagation of an existing surface crack. Most current tests are shown to be unsuitable for assessing the critical traction at initiation. A new test geometry is presented that initiates failure away from an air interface, produces a slowly varying stress distribution near the initiation site and minimal contributions from thermal residual stresses, and enables tests with mixed modes of loading. This new geometry is used to examine temperature-dependent adhesive failure in tensile, shear, and mixed modes of loading for both smooth and rough surfaces. Some of the experimental results are unexpected. As examples, the critical traction at initiation of adhesive failure is apparently insensitive to surface roughness, and the critical normal traction is independent of temperature while the critical tangential traction tracks the shear yield stress.