making wide glue-ups...

[dirk martin]

if you need a bunch of 1/8 thick stock, and a bunch of 1/4" thick stock, and you need it to be about 12" wide, and 4' long, and you have a nice resaw setup....

Assume you're starting with 4/4 stock.

Do you resaw, then glue-up?
Or do you glue up the 4/4 stock to width, and then resaw when dry?

[Mike Cruz]

I would glue up then resaw. I can't imagine trying to do a good glue up of 1/8" stock. BTJM...

[Peter Quinn]

Take your pick, I've done both, either works. The grain match may be better if you resaw then glue because it can change as you cut into the wood, though as Mike notes it is certainly easier to glue up 4/4 than 1/8". If you glue up thin, keep some weight on your parts to keep them flat and give it just enough pressure to make it squeeze, which is surprisingly light at 1/8". The 1/4" glue up is relatively simple, and it allows you to cut a little heavy and flatten if that is important.

[Prashun Patel]

If it were me, I'd glue then resaw. Keeping thin stock flat while clamping is a pain for me - even with cauls. I'd much rather deal with passing the thin/wide resawed stock through a planer or drum sander.

[Will Overton]

I would do the glue up first, for reasons already mentioned above.

[dirk martin]

Thanks for the replies, gents.
I tried gluing up some 1/4" thick pieces last night, and it didn't work too well. They kept wanting to jump out of the clamps. So, I'll glue up first. I was just hoping to not have to resaw such wide material.

The bottle of Titebond says it needs to be clamped a minimum of 1 hr. I've got a lot to glue up...can I clamp for about an hour, remove the boards from the clamps to let them cure further, and move on to more boards?

[Alan Schwabacher]

As others have mentioned, if you glue up the thin stock it gives you better bookmatches and more control over grain matching in general. There is a trick to getting good glueups on thin stock that Niki once posted.

I hope it is acceptable to give a link to a compendium that is not a forum. Here it is:

http://www.cianperez.com/Wood/WoodDocs/Wood_How_To/INDEX_How_To_pages/Niki_GlueingUpThinBoards.htm

[Joe Chritz]

The bottle of Titebond says it needs to be clamped a minimum of 1 hr. I've got a lot to glue up...can I clamp for about an hour, remove the boards from the clamps to let them cure further, and move on to more boards?

A study done on glue strength a while ago showed that most PVA glues (yellow) have over 80% strength in about 20-30 minutes. I regularly glue for 30 minutes and take them out and set aside to do another panel.

Joe

[Prashun Patel]

You can remove the boards from clamps after the minimum time, but you can't stress the joint for 24hrs.

[Loren Hedahl]

I don't know if this is alright or not, but I had a bunch of extra rough cut ash and for my home kitchen decided to use it for drawer sides. I cleaned up all four sides with a jointer, then resawed to 5/8. That left me with with 1/8 oversized drawer sides and some extra thick veneer.

Then I glued up drawer sides as needed just using tape for clamping and some cement blocks along the joint to hold it flat against a wax papered table. After the first batch dried I tried breaking it at the glue line and found the glue line stronger than the wood in most places. Finally I run the glue-ups through a lunch box planer to get the needed 1/2 inch thickness.

Obviously a proper clamp setup would be better, but like many, I never seem to have enough or at least enough of the right kind of clamps. Using just the clamps I have could easily drag this project out most of the summer.

I haven't made any of these glue-ups into actual drawers yet -- so if any have had a bad experience doing it this way, let me know. If not, what I plan to do is make one drawer, mount it in one of the cabinets, fill it with heavier stuff than my wife intends to store in it and slam it open and shut a bunch of times. If it remains intact, I'll go with it. If not I'll saw my joints apart, buy some more clamps and do it the regular way.

OK?