Is Titebond III worth it, and can it be your only wood glue?

[Mark Bolton]

As (you and other) pizza makers know, the peel doesn't stay in the oven long enough to get beyond barely warm. The heat capacity (and typical thickness) of the wood accounts for this. The moisture content of the pizza is the bigger issue.

Just say, If your peel gets hot, you're doing it wrong. Etc. :^)

10-4.. couldnt agree more. Beyond that most commercial outfits use the old super thin aluminum pizza peels because they are light and dirt cheap. We cook pizza at least once a week, with two pizza peels (oven heated for 4 hours to 550). Make pizza one on peel one, toss it in oven. Make pizza two on peel two, when #1 comes out toss #2 in pull #1 out with its peel.

Neither peel sees the most remote amount of heat. BUT.... and this is a big BUT.. they both have creep (that means nothing on a pizza peel) and one of them has a slight glue line failure at the tip. Now I have several cutting boards that are washed and immersed in hot soapy water every day of the week, multiple times, with TBII, and they are dead tight.

This is my point about torture tests. You dont have to make a joint and leave it outside. Make an item, and use the heck out of it in your house. Put it in the dishwasher. Take it out of the sink from warm soapy water and put it outside in sub zero weather. Beat the heck out of it. You customers will do things to your products you could never imagine or ever protect yourself against.


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[John TenEyck]

For what it's worth, Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue and Unibond 800 are pretty much the same thing (urea formaldehyde), just packaged differently. The problems you had with Weldwood leave me scratching my head, just as I'm sure my failures with Better Bond baffle you. I've never had a failure with Weldwood PRG, and some of those projects live on exterior doors, one of them in direct western sun, rain, etc. Talk about a brutal test. Two years and so far, so good.

John

[Brian Holcombe]

Brian, was that your piece in FWW this month? Beautiful piece.

I glued some 1/16" shop sawn rift sawn WO with Better Bond; 2 hours in the vacuum bag. I came back the next morning and found it like this.



Well that's not good. I made another with what I thought was exactly the right coverage rate, and left it under vacuum for at least 8 hours. For reference, 1 hour is the claimed minimum requirement.




OK, problem solved. I turned it into a nice little table to go with the adjacent cabinet.



In less than a year I got a call. At least two of the seams had begun to curl open; not much, but enough that it was obvious and definitely enough for this extremely critical client to complain. Sorry, I never took a picture of it. The house it's in has AC and the owner is anal beyond all reason so it certainly was not subjected to much abuse. I replaced the top with an identical one but glued with Plastic Resin Glue. 4 years later it's still perfect. I've never used PVA glue again with shop sawn veneer. The only reason I tried switching from PRG to PVA was to get faster throughput through the vacuum bag. When that didn't even turn out to be the case for me I had already gone back to PRG before I got the call of the problem. Like I said, I'm glad you haven't had any problems. I know the stuff works with commercial veneer. I just don't think it's a robust product once you move to shop sawn veneer, which is thicker and is sawn, not creped with a knife.

John

For what it's worth, Weldwood Plastic Resin Glue and Unibond 800 are pretty much the same thing (urea formaldehyde), just packaged differently. The problems you had with Weldwood leave me scratching my head, just as I'm sure my failures with Better Bond baffle you. I've never had a failure with Weldwood PRG, and some of those projects live on exterior doors, one of them in direct western sun, rain, etc. Talk about a brutal test. Two years and so far, so good.

John

That was me, thank you, kindly!

Wow, that's curious. I've not had that happen. I'm in and out of the bag in 45 min to and hour max. My logic is that the bag is a clamp but it doesn't allow airflow so once the glue is setup it's back out of the bag to cure (needs airflow). Same thing clamping joinery.

I don't know the PSI rating of BB, but TB cold press is 2500psi, where TBII is 3750psi.

A lot of stuff I've made is near to me, so I can stop in and check it out. Not everything, but many things.

I've only recently started thinning the panels after producing them. I usually do it just to remove thickness inconsistencies from panel to panel but it has the added benefit of thinning the veneer. I have been knocking them down to about .060".

[Patrick Kane]

I have slight separation on the tip of my one pizza peel(TBIII). Like Mark, i have two walnut peels, but i cook mine on my former BGE and now on a primo XL at 700°+. Maybe the high heat caused the mini failure in my one peel? Im talking a gap of 1/16" wide and maybe 1/8" long. I should also note i hand planed a primary bevel with slight back bevel to a razor at the edge.

I once had a customer put an end grain board in the dishwasher. Also TB III. It didnt explode, but it had multiple catastrophic failures in half a dozen places. 1/2"+ gaps in places. I dont know if its fair to expect a wood product to withstand extreme moisture, humidity, and heat of a dishwasher. Oddly enough i broke out the big boy jorgie 7200 clamps and used more TB III and compressed that damaged board until it closed up. My brother ended up giving it to one of his college girlfriends years ago. Wonder how that board is doing today...

[John TenEyck]

The only thing longer vacuum bag time is going to do for PVA glues is to let the water migrate further into the wood, which should help the glue stiffen more. I agree that you still need to get that water back out of the wood and the only way to do that is to take it out of the bag. This is the huge advantage of using UF glues or epoxies. UF glues consume the water during the cure reaction and epoxies have none to start with. The downside is you have to leave them in the bag longer, a lot longer in some cases. I still haven't figured out how long I actually have to leave them in the bag until the cure is sufficient to hold the veneer; I've been leaving them in until they reach essentially full cure which is 13 hours for PRG at 70F. I would dearly love to have a faster curing system.

John

[Kevin Jenness]

John, you can speed up the cure time with an electric blanket.

To the original question, I don't like TB3. It doesn't cure hard, thus the creep problems, and it doesn't like heat.

I keep Titebond 2, Titebond Extend and epoxy on the shelf. T2 for general use with reasonable water resistance (I have two storm doors 20 years old glued up with it in fine shape), Extend for complicated assemblies and pressing stable sliced veneer (it has the least creep of the Titebond family) and epoxy for exterior work, sawn veneer and assemblies requiring extended time and lubricity. UF glue has its place but it's not available locally and not very shelf stable so I buy it by the job, plus it's fairly toxic (I am immune to epoxy sensitivity so far).

[Jim Allen]

Needless to say I am in the minority. I'm a retired engineer who has been doing woodworking for 40 years, never have used Titebond, for the last 10 years or so I've used Gorilla Glue when I wasn't using epoxy or CA, and have never had a problem with it.

Is there something I don't know?

[Simon MacGowen]

Needless to say I am in the minority. I'm a retired engineer who has been doing woodworking for 40 years, never have used Titebond, for the last 10 years or so I've used Gorilla Glue when I wasn't using epoxy or CA, and have never had a problem with it.

Is there something I don't know?

You are definitely in the minority, Jim. I do not know anyone whose go-to glue is GG. But furniture maker Craig Thibodeau is i your company: https://www.finewoodworking.com/2016...-my-go-to-glue

Simon

[Jim Allen]

The one I use mostly is their PVA glue not the polyurethane, which is what Craig is talking about.

[Simon MacGowen]

I have used the GG PVA (white) too, and could not tell any difference from other PVA glue. Simon

[John TenEyck]

I ,again, disagree that all PVA creeps. White glue creeps. Lack of creep with yellow was recognized early on as an advantage over white. Many times I was summoned to retrieve a piece from the finishing room to re sand a joint that had
moved and was not flush. Never happened again after we switched to yellow. I concede that that an overly loose fitting mortise and tenon joint might creep a little even with yellow glue.

This is from the USDA's Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook, Chapter 10 page 24:

"Whether a synthetic adhesive is thermoplastic or thermosetting has a major influence on its performance in service. Thermoplastics are long-chain polymers that soften and flow on heating and then harden again upon cooling. They generally have less resistance to heat, moisture, and longterm static loading than do thermosetting polymers. Common thermoplastic adhesives for wood include poly(vinyl acetate) emulsions, elastomerics, contacts, and hot-melts. Thermosetting polymers make excellent structural adhesives because they undergo irreversible chemical change when cured, and on reheating, they do not soften and flow again. They form cross-linked polymers that can have high strength, have resistance to moisture and other chemicals, and are rigid enough to support high, long-term static loads without deforming. Phenol-formaldehyde, resorcinol-formaldehyde, melamine-formaldehyde, urea-formaldehyde, isocyanate, and epoxy adhesives are examples of thermosetting polymers."

Your results with yellow glue may have been better than with white glue, and even satisfactory for your purposes, but the fact remains that all PVA glues creep and that can be a problem in some applications.

John

[John TenEyck]

John, you can speed up the cure time with an electric blanket.

To the original question, I don't like TB3. It doesn't cure hard, thus the creep problems, and it doesn't like heat.

I keep Titebond 2, Titebond Extend and epoxy on the shelf. T2 for general use with reasonable water resistance (I have two storm doors 20 years old glued up with it in fine shape), Extend for complicated assemblies and pressing stable sliced veneer (it has the least creep of the Titebond family) and epoxy for exterior work, sawn veneer and assemblies requiring extended time and lubricity. UF glue has its place but it's not available locally and not very shelf stable so I buy it by the job, plus it's fairly toxic (I am immune to epoxy sensitivity so far).

Kevin, yes an electric blanket helps, but it doesn't improve the cure time very much if you are veneering both sides of a panel at once, which is my normal practice. The temperature gradient from top to bottom is high and you can't remove the piece until the bottom is cured. I also suspect that non uniform cure rates can lead to permanent panel deformation, but I'm not positive. I've been scheming on how to build heated platens at a reasonable cost - i.e. for cheap to overcome this problem.

UF glue (Weldwood PRG) is only a mouse click away on Amazon and has a shelf life of at least a year in a sealed bucket. Toxicity is related mostly to when it's being mixed so I wear an organics respirator or do it outside. After that, it's fine as long as you wear gloves.

John

[Mel Fulks]

John,thanks. I don't doubt the experiences of others....I just wonder how they botched them !! Gonna, at least, remember to more carefully consider the possibility of trouble.

[Bohdan Drozdowskyj]

I had to put this out there....
I have worked for years in a textile factory that had a dye room.
They had 55gal. drums of starch. It smelled and looked like Elmers
glue. So one day I took some and glued two 2x4's together. I could
not get them apart the next day. do you think it's all the same thing?

I used to buy PVA glue direct from a manufacturer in 44 gal drums. One day their rep was visiting and I mentioned that I had been offered a cheaper glue.

He said "How much do you want to pay?" I said "What do you mean?" he said "We can make the glue any price you want to pay. We just water it down and then add starch to thicken it up. Most people can't tell."

"One major furniture manufacturer used a cheap glue and had to recall all of their production because their furniture started to fall apart in the showroom."

[Ron Citerone]

I used to buy PVA glue direct from a manufacturer in 44 gal drums. One day their rep was visiting and I mentioned that I had been offered a cheaper glue.

He said "How much do you want to pay?" I said "What do you mean?" he said "We can make the glue any price you want to pay. We just water it down and then add starch to thicken it up. Most people can't tell."

"One major furniture manufacturer used a cheap glue and had to recall all of their production because their furniture started to fall apart in the showroom."

That is way too watered down, it should at least hold until it is in the customer's home!