Plywood repair

[John T Barker]

I have a plywood decked balcony with my apartment and last year it took a hit from a tree branch. This peeled of the tin trim that protects the lead edge of the ply and it became exposed to weather and has delaminated about 1-2" at the corner. I'm thinking I can squeeze some adhesive of some kind in the opening, screw or nail it down and then reapply the edge trim. I don't do much in this kind of work so I'm wondering what kind of adhesive would be good for this. The corner of the balcony gets very little traffic, as does the rest of it, I simply want it to look "right." Can any of you make suggestions please?

[Andrew Hughes]

If your taking about the drip edge metal.Can you slip a new piece in and cover the old?
Without see it we can only guess.

[Wayne Lomman]

John, use a 2 part epoxy glue. This will be easy to get from a local shop and will last in this exposed position. Cheers

[John Blazy]

Wayne is right - two part epoxy is perfect for this. However, the difference between right and just OK is based on how you apply. When I built my boat, I read about pre-wetting porous surfaces prior to clamping and applying more epoxy. Tremendous tip, so I took it further. I needed to glue end grain to end grain in several areas, so by heating the end grain with a heat gun, then applying the epoxy, several great things happen:

• the heat lowers the viscosity of the epoxy, thus it soaks in further INTO the wood
• Heat causes the air to expand inside the wood, so once heat is taken away and the wood cools, it actually sucks the epoxy in.
• Then the heat causes the epoxy to set quicker, getting thick sooner, therefore final coats after the heated "prewetting" actually fill the joint, rather than starving the joint.

So I would scrape out in between the delaminated areas with a thin pc of metal to get better penetration, then fill a syringe with the epoxy using a .060" needle. I get all mine from McMaster Carr, but Grainger will have them too.

Then heat the area, and pump it full of epoxy, wait about ten minutes (if using boat epoxy, which is typically 6 hr cure time), then add more epoxy, then clamp.

If using small tubes of store bought epoxy, get the longest cure time possible, pump into heated joint and clamp immediately. End grain of the plywood will require multiple applications til you dont see it soaking up any more epoxy.

[John T Barker]

I've used epoxy a lot for furniture so I'm pretty familiar with it. I wanted to go with easy because I'll be working about seven feet off the ground and want to make it easier on myself (in the process of recovering from rotator cuff repair). Are any of the tubed adhesives worth using?

Thanks

[Wayne Lomman]

John, if you use epoxy it will end up as good as the original and you won,t have to do it again as it will last as long as the plywood. Tube type construction adhesives are handy but not great where exposed to the weather despite what the labels say. Cheers

[Tom Giacomo]

Tite-bond 3 glue is waterproof.

[Wayne Lomman]

Titebond 3 falls in the same category as tube glues. It does not do well in weather exposure.