So I’m sure you’ve seen them where you have a bunch of varieties of wood glued up with staggered patterns like wood floors, how do you glue those up, cause my only logic is to do it strip by strip so you can put pressure on both the x and z axis so you don’t get gaps where the end grains meet at random intervals throughout the pattern, any idea or tips other than glueing it strip by strip which for the project I’m doing might take a solid week week and a half just in glueing so any help will be seriously appreciated
Hi Chris!
Are you veneering or sticker wood strips?
If veneering, then you need a substrate. What I have seen is when laying out the veneers, then overlap them a little then cut the line with the Xacto blade. then they will be a perfect match with the correct amount of joint pressure. Or you may make a simple clamping vice/tool representing the negative pattern profile?
butting and glueing endgrain is alway problematic because you get the most shrinkage in that orientation. The best thing you can do is introduce some sidegrain. when I worked at a flooring company the ends were cut almost like shiplap (or fancy tongue and groove) for glueup and stability. But then the thickness was around 5/8" to start.
another method is to do ‘finger’ joints like this:
but unfortunately that’s an expensive router bit.
Glueing to a substrate does give you the advantage of glueing side grain to side grain which will be much stable. Best of luck! Cheers!
1 Like
Yep. next best…sizing the joint:
http://www.titebond.com/resources/use/glues/applicationtips
Although good joint design minimizes the need for gluing end grain, sometimes end grain joints are unavoidable. The strength of end grain joints can be improved if the “open” end grain is first sized. A sizing mixture may be made by mixing one part to two parts water to one part glue. Place the sizing mixture on the end grain. Let it soak in for no more than two minutes, and then continue with a regular application of glue.
@Chris_Fazio : is it possible that best approach is to make all of your long multi-wood strips first, i.e. the end-grain joints. Then long grain joints once you are happy with all the strips?
If I write “strips” one more time, I am probably gonna go ahead and take all my clothes off, so fair warning!.
So give the last line I think I’ll reply to you instead of @mblatz lol! Yea would probably work perfectly! I’d have to have a lot of sacrificial scrap pieces handy to prevent tear out but it’ll Atleast allow me to glue it up as a whole, yea the cheap ones I’m seeing on amazon don’t have the safest sounding reviews
But the Armand or Freud ones look no incredible cheap but also not too bad! Good idea! I appreciate it! Also nobody say (thinly sliced sections of wood) after @mblatz comment that word is now like vuldamort) lol
1 Like