Molding an arch with tightbond glue with high speed steel?

[Jeff Longley]

I have made an arch for over a window and now have to put it through my molding table. My knives are made of High Speed Steel. The arch was made up of thin 1/8 inch strips of poplur glued up with tightbond glue. My question is will the glue dull up my knives? If anyone has tried this please let me know how it worked for you.

Jeff

[Jerome Hanby]

No first hand experience, but I've read lots of posts talking about glue being hard on planer and jointer knives...

[Jeff Duncan]

If you do enough of it, yup it will. For one piece....I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, if you want to make the arch, how else are you going to do it?;)

I don't have a molder but put glue-ups through my shaper all the time. It's not a problem. I do try to scrape the heavy glue off before it gets too hard though. No sense in putting more through the knives than necessary.

good luck,
JeffD

[Peter Quinn]

IME HSS beats plastic every time. PVA glue is vinyl, or plastic. Will it dull your knives quicker? Probably, but it won't kill them IME. I run glue joints over the jointer na d through the planer all the time with no ill effects. If you had something like plastic resin glue, thats a different story. That stuff dries pretty hard. But even tite bond III is little match for HSS.

I am curious though, this is an arched head casing you are going to run through a molder? I'd have been inclined to make it segmented in 3-5 pieces rather than bend an arch around the radius from thin strips. Poplar is pretty available in decent widths, and relatively cheap too. Why the bent lamination or am I missing something? A segmented casing would minimize the glue involved and the spring back or potential creep too.

[Steve Jenkins]

I have same question as Peter. I have made a bunch of radiused casing and always done it segmented. even stain grade looks good if you can get a large enough board to cut the segments out sequentially. The grain will match across the joints if you keep track of things.