Gluing up Cherry

[William A Johnston]

I've encountered an issue with making some end grain cutting boards for Christmas gifts. The maple and walnunt slabs have glued up nicely but on the cherry slabs I have a failure at the glue joint. It only happens on the cherry?

I have run all boards through my spiral head jounter and all pieces are square. I read you can put a drop of water and if it soaks up within a couple of minutes the wood is good for gluing. Well after jointing the cherry a droplet does not soak up into the wood? But after lightly sanding the edge it soaks up in a few minutes.

Is the edge becoming burnished?

What have others done to glue up cherry?

I have fresh cutters on the jointer and I use 3/4" pipe clamps and use my fingers and thumb to tighten.

Thanks for any advise.

Bill

[Jim Becker]

If anything, the cherry should glue up easier than the maple! I've never had the issue you describe with cherry and have used a lot of it over the years. What glue are you using? Be sure you're not sanding the pieces finely, too...the edges you are gluing don't want to be "silky smooth" and burnished.

[William A Johnston]

Jim,

I'm using titebond 3. The boards are being glued up on the edge grain. I can't wrap my head around why it is failing at the glue joint. All my maple and walnut glued up great right from the jointer. Also it is brand new bottle of glue I purchased yesterday. Do you think my spital head jointer is getting the edge to smooth? I thought about running the boards through my drum sander and give it a try. I keep 80 grit on it. I also keep my shop around 65 to 70 degrees and store the gallon of glue on a shelf.

Bill

[Andrew Hughes]

I also had a problem gluing Cherry last week. It was a curved laminate when I checked the cut offs the glued didn’t bond that well. My surfaces were hand planed. I remade the piece and scuffed it with 100 grit it was much better.
My only suggestion is to wet both sides and clamp very tight.
Good luck

[Jim Morgan]

Did you joint the cherry first, last, or in the middle?

[William A Johnston]

Should I wet the edges to raise the grain? Let it dry then glue?

I did all my jointer work this morning then went straight to glue up. I typically leave my pieces clammped for an hour or so so I can scrape and excess off easy

[Zachary Hoyt]

That's very odd, I routinely glue up all three of those woods and I have also found that if anything cherry glues better than maple. I have never used Titebond 3, though, only 1, so maybe there's something about the glue that is causing the difference.
Zach

[Jim Becker]

Interesting. I only use Titebond III for all of my work which is why I'm further confused about the issue. I agree with abrading the wood to see if that resolves the problem.

[Bradley Gray]

I'm pretty sure if you run it through the drum sander all will be good. 80 grit is perfect.

[glenn bradley]

I would like to ask where the cherry sourced from. The reason is that I have, like a lot of folks, glued up a lot of cherry. I am curious if yours is locally milled. Much of my cherry is jointed with hand planes which leaves an almost glassy surface.

[Robert Engel]

The only explanation I can give for the glue failure is possibly some resin in the wood. I leave panels in clamps overnight because I have had some issues taking out of clamps in a few hours.

FWIW, I've read about planed surface and glue integrity, since I often do spring joints or a final jointing with hand plane for long panel glue ups.

I've seen many build videos where hand planed edges are glued without sanding and some comments from the maker that it doesn't matter.

I've tested it myself & have never had a problem.

Of course this is something you will have to prove to yourself.

[Bob Grier]

When using Titebond glue I have not had a problem removing clamps after an hour when edge gluing 1/2" or thicker cherry or any other wood. However, I have had a problem removing clamps after an hour with cherry and other woods when edge gluing veneers or thin pieces. In these cases I tape the joints before gluing and then place the assembled and glued piece tape down on the work bench. Then I may add other layers of veneer or not but after I am finished, I place plastic wrap on top of the laminate and then cover with 3/4" plywood with cauls over the plywood to clamp everything down tight to the work bench. When I do this I have found that it is best to leave in the clamps until the next day. If I remove the clamps after an hour the glue joints usually separate.

Do you think leaving the clamps in place longer might help. Other than that, I would suspect that the pieces of wood might be cupping due to uneven clamp pressure or because they sat for a while after milling before gluing.

[Mark Bolton]

Switch to urethane (i.e. gorilla glue) for your cutting boards and youll be better off all around.

[John TenEyck]

Switch to urethane (i.e. gorilla glue) for your cutting boards and youll be better off all around.

What's your logic and/or experience with that comment, Mark? I've never been impressed with Gorilla Glue except for gluing air dried wood to be used outdoors. FWW testing on KD wood showed it to have much lower strength compared to TB.

John

[Mark Bolton]

What's your logic and/or experience with that comment, Mark? I've never been impressed with Gorilla Glue except for gluing air dried wood to be used outdoors. FWW testing on KD wood showed it to have much lower strength compared to TB.

John

We glued up endless boards with TBIII for a long while. You would often times see creep often before they even left the shop (were not talking about sloppy work but we are also not talking about treating a long grain commodity board like a piece of chippendale furniture either and even boards that I still have in use personally to this day that were glued up with TBIII are together but have long shown opening in the ends at the glue line and none in the field. Conversely, boards made at the very same time using urethane show absolutely ZERO creep and are dead tight at the glue line to this day. If there is an end split its in the field meaning the wood failed not the glue line. You can drag your fingernails over a board and instantly feel the creep in a PVA board.

I do a ton of severe testing. Lay glue ups out in the weather. Lock them in a hot vehicle. Set them on a counter in my shop that gets blasted with full direct sun through a non low-e window. PVA will often fail but TBIII will fail 100% of the time. Cutting boards live a brutal life and were only talking long grain, you go to end grain and the brutality is akin to Genghis Khan with regards to wood movement. Mine in personal use probably last unreasonably long because we lightly wash them, dry them with a towel, and stand them on edge to dry. That said, I never refresh the finish and try to abuse them to torture test them.

You can fiddle faddle around the TBIII thing all you want but all you have to do is look to the shops that build massive endgrain tops, 3" thick, commercially, that have had failures. You can read it all over about large shops that have "rid their shop of all TBIII". It is not the best glue for the job. Im not saying PU is, but its better.