Soild wood edge banding caul

[jonathan snyder]

Hi folks,

I am working on a muprhy bed, which is mostly plywood construction. I opted for solid wood edge banding. As my banding is only 1/4" thick, I cant use biscuts for alingment. I tried using a caul to glue up the banding, but alinging the banding and the caul proved to be too much, so I came up with this idea. Perhaps some you you have already thought of this, but i have not seen it, so I thought I would post it.

I made a caul about 1 1/4" thick, tapered on the jointer, and routed a groove the width of the edge banding and half as deep as the banding is thick.

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The caul holds the banding in place and I only have to worry about alinging the banding, not the banding & the caul.

Here it is clamped up. I left both edges of the banding proud and plane it down after the glue dries.


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Hope this helps to make somebodys project go a little bit smoother.

Jonathan

[Chris Padilla]

Jonathan,

Maybe I'm not following here but if your edge-banding is oversize to be trimmed flush later, alignment should just be close enough to be over all edges of the ply, right?

Why all the trouble to use nice maple to make cauls? Were the pieces being edge-banding quite long? Did you need to use very long pipes on your pipe clamps?

[jonathan snyder]

Chris,

The piece of ply in the picture is 62" X 5 7/8 and will be banded on 3 sides. My edge banding is only 13/16" wide, so I did not have a-lot of wiggle room. The caul really helped simpify alingment on the long edges. I ripped a 2x4 down to make the cauls.

I have never done solid wood edge banding before, and I ended up with nearly invisable glue lines, so I thought I would share my method.

Jonathan

[Aaron Beaver]

Jonathan, the taper on your caul, did you make it taper toward the center from each end making the center the thickest part? How much taper did you use?

Thanks

[Chris Padilla]

Thanks, Jonathan. I didn't mean to come across negative-toned in any way...I just was curious about the why's behind your method. Banding 13/16" strips on 3/4" ply does indeed provide very little wiggle room! Mine are usually an inch wide! :) Oh, I'm glad you didn't use nice maple for the cauls! :o

Will you miter the corners or take the banding straight-out? On a painted bathroom vanity, I didn't bother with miters on my edge-banding.

[jonathan snyder]

Aaron,

Yes, the center is the thickest part. I Have some 80" edges to band, so I made a caul 86" long in addition to the small one in the picture. I made three passes on the jointer for the tapers, and then hit the center with a smooth plane to round it over, It looks like a good 1/8" taper on each end of the long one.

Chris,

No problem, I guess if you are used to using 1" wide banding, my idea seem like a bunch more work. I did not have that option. One of the drawbacks to being a woodworker in Alaska is that there is only one place in Anchorage to buy hardwood, and most of what they have is s2s or s3s surfaced to 13/16". I'm using hickory plywood, and they do not stock hickory in 6/4, so i'm stuck with puting 13/16" banding on 3/4 ply.

I guess the advantage is it did not take long to bring the edges flush with the ply with a block plane!

I discovered another advantage to the caul, when I noticed that the 86" edge banding I cut yesterday developed a bit of a bow. The caul kept the edges parellel, and made alingment much easier

Jonathan