what glue for maple

[dan sherman]

I'm still a newbie, so i'm lost when it comes to glue.

last weekend i picked up some 4/4 soft maple, that I'm going to turn into tops for role-away benches. I'm planing on cutting the boards 2" wide, then stand them on end fore gluing (face joint ?).

What glue would be best for this wood and type of joint?

This is just a test project before i attempt to make a bench, and I want to make sure I use the right glue, because i have read the horror stories about bench tops coming apart.

-Dan

[Lance Norris]

Any yellow woodworking glue will work fine. I use Elmers and Tightbond III. Both seem equal.

[Joe Chritz]

Yeah, any yellow wood glue. Commonly called PVA glue.

I have a scientfic method to purchasing yellow glue. I always buy tightbond original unless something else is on sale, closer to the front or easier to grab.

Point is all PVA glue is pretty interchangable within its class. Plain, extended open time, water resistant, etc.

I got started with tightbond because they used to be the only small bottles with a push top. Now I see elmers has a really nice pop top and I just got some to reuse the bottle.

Joe

[Chris Friesen]

last weekend i picked up some 4/4 soft maple, that I'm going to turn into tops for role-away benches. I'm planing on cutting the boards 2" wide, then stand them on end fore gluing (face joint ?).

What glue would be best for this wood and type of joint?


Any yellow glue would be fine. Titebond III is more expensive, but has a longer open time, meaning you have more time to spread the glue and get things lined up before you need to tighten the clamps down.

Don't be too surprised if you don't have enough open time to do the entire glue-up in one shot. One common technique (which you could also use for the workbench later on) is to glue up sub-sections that are just narrow enough to fit through your planer, plane them separately, then glue up the subsections being as careful as possible to align everything just right.

[Peter Quinn]

No joint is necessary on a long grain to long grain glue up for stength. You may consider using biscuits, dowels, splines, a matching glue joint router bit or tongue and groove for alignment when gluing bench tops but none are truly needed.

I usually glue up sections whose width will fit on my jointer, leaving them slightly thicker than my final dimension. Typically I go for 7"'s of width for my 8" jointer. I get the alignment close with clamps and cauls, joint these flat, then only have a few joints to worry about for the final glue up.