The Truth About Glue For Woodworking

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woodworking glue

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[Music] [Applause] welcome back everyone in today's video we're going to talk about glue we're not just going to talk about glue but we're going to try and demystify a few things about glue so hopefully you can save some money in your workshop and you buy the right glue for the right project at the right time so with that let's get to it now the most common glue that you're going to be familiar with in the wood shop is pva glue which stands for polyvinyl acetate it is glues such as this one here if you are going to compare it to a bottle of titebond it's basically like titebond one it's great for joinery for indoor projects it's not meant for any kind of outdoor use but it is something i'll buy in large quantities like this especially if i've got some big projects coming up or if i'm building a lot of furniture most of the time this will last me about two years unless i'm making something like a butcher's block countertop or something like that the thing you got to know about pva glue is that the brand is kind of not that important a lot of them are formulated the same way especially the glues that are formulated for indoor use and they will have similar specs on them if you have a question about that you can go on to the manufacturer's website and read up some more on their specs what i'll do is i'll take a big bottle like this and then i'll fill up my glue box so i've got a large glue bot and a mini glue bot or baby glue bot and these you can find on amazon if you do a search for glue bot i use these all the time for applying the glue they come in handy most of the working glue that i use in the shop is contained in these bottles and then when i'm done with them i just put them away now i just brought out a lot of my glues from winter storage of course i take them out of the garage during the winter store them inside in a closet and as i need them for winter projects i'll take them out of the closet and use them in the shop and then put them back now that it's warming up outside i'll store them in the shop and it should be okay temperature wise speaking of temperature most of these pva glues will work at around 59 degrees fahrenheit or 15 degrees celsius depending on again the manufacturer some of them say you can use them at lower temperatures although i do not recommend it i usually try to use these at over 68 degrees for good measure and that gives me a slightly better working glue and better performance in terms of adhesion most pva glues will dry translucent and will not leave much of a color trace although you want to be careful how much you use i think i use probably less than i used to it doesn't really take that much and it will depend on the surface that you are gluing so for example if you're gluing face grain to face grain you don't really need that much glue it will basically sit mostly on the surface and you will have a fairly high tack when you contact a piece of wood with face grain to another piece of wood with face grain the same thing goes with edge grain edge grain is the next best thing where you'll get a really good point of contact so say if you're making a box joint and you're putting your two pieces together the glue on the edge grain for each adjoining piece will be the important part i don't put a lot of glue into the end grain when i'm joining something like that because end grain will just tend to suck up the glue like a sponge and you'll basically just lose it and it's kind of a waste as you get more experience with woodworking you start to learn how to apply glue especially in joinery and do it in a smart way so that you're not really wasting and you're not using more than you need so that your cleanup job is not as big the next glue i'm going to show you is also a pva glue it is tight bond type 2. this is interesting because i have tight bond type 2 and then i've got gorilla wood glue and this is also a type 2 they are pretty much exactly the same they are both graded for indoor outdoor use that's a type 2 glue so that means that they will be usable outside but you do not want to use it on any project that's going to be submersed in water it will not be 100 waterproof now i'll tell you i've used this on planter boxes both of these on projects like planter boxes and they've held up really well i've still got my planter boxes held together really nicely i don't use it for anything structural i use it for things like the trim so if i've got a thin piece of trim that i want to glue on to around the inner edge of a planter box just to make it look prettier i'll use one of these glues and it'll work terrific so far so good nothing's popped off as long as water is moving away from your project it's moving away from whatever you use the glue on and it's not sitting on it your project should hold up just fine another thing i should note is that these are mildew resistant as well so they're really good for regular use indoors now type on i can only find in certain stores where i live the gorilla glue is widely available at almost every hardware store and you just got to make sure that you're getting the type 2 version not the regular wood glue now the thing that people ask quite frequently is how long does pva glue last i can tell you that i have kept pva glue in a closet for up to three and a half years and it still works fine for most projects especially indoor projects when we get into outdoor projects however the pva glue might not do the job quite as well as it normally would if it was fresh and in terms of freshness you'll find the date that it left the factory stamped on the bottle and that is usually something you can compare when you go to the store to buy your glue you can buy the freshest bottle that's on the shelf however they're usually only two or three months apart at the most most of the glue you see that stocked in a store is there and it's basically been shipped within the same sort of time frame so in terms of shelf life it's really hard to judge they say two years is kind of the max but i can tell you from experience i've used it for up to about three years and have not had any problems now in terms of quantity of glue how much should you buy it once that depends on how many projects you plan to do at any given time throughout the year if i'm doing a really big project like i said i'll buy a big jug of it but if i'm doing regular sort of furniture projects or just regular sort of joinery i know i'm building maybe three or four pieces of furniture in a year this size right here 32 fluid ounces or 946 milliliters will do just fine and actually last you quite a long time you can stretch this out if you're careful with it now if you want to be more waterproof the way to go is polyurethane glue that is another variety and again the gorilla brand here is one of the most common it's great stuff it works for wood stone and metal i think the only thing it doesn't really glue all that well is plastic it's a pretty versatile glue the one issue with polyurethane glue is that once you open it it does not have a long shelf life and is one of my older bottles and it's now solid so it's been in the cupboard for about a year which is way too long for polyurethane glue and it's done it's going to be thrown in the garbage so this is what you have to be careful with with polyurethane glue you do have to use it up within a couple of months of buying it because it will not last long the shelf life is very short even with the lid tightly capped on top this bottle of glue will just turn into a solid mass now the advantage of polyurethane glue is that it is fully waterproof you can use it on all outdoor projects and in fact it is actually recommended to use it on most outdoor projects you're not going to have any issues with it coming apart or delaminating most polyurethane glues like this one is water activated so in order to use it you have to dampen one surface and then you apply the glue to the other surface once it's hit the water it activates and starts to foam up it starts to expand and it will expand into the wood grain which is really good but it also can expand so that it will push a joint apart you do have to make sure that you're using adequate clamping with polyurethane glue otherwise you can get the joint splitting you can get some kind of weird effects with it because it does expand rather quickly it will usually just expand out of the joint and then you'll have a bit of cleanup once it dries which is pretty easy to clean off you basically can just chip the residue off when it's done the other variety of polyurethane glue that you can use is construction glue so construction adhesive which is again it's a little more expensive but it is worth it if you're doing outdoor projects this is pretty much made for any application on a construction site it will adhere to wood metal stone brick anything basically osb plywood it doesn't matter what you're using the polyurethane construction glue is really good stuff and again i would say that be careful how much you buy because it does not have a long shelf life once you open it it is pretty much done and you've got to use it up as much as possible to get your money's worth this particular kind does not foam up like the water activated polyurethane glue this just basically gets applied with a caulking gun and you're done pretty easy stuff to work with and i've seen it used in all kinds of applications indoor and outdoor but if you're doing outdoor projects this is the way to go now finally we move into things like ca glue you might know ca glue as super glue now if it's super glue it sometimes just comes in one little bottle and it comes under different brand names crazy glue etc all that kind of classic stuff this particular kind of ca glue is activated using a spray activator and then once the glue is applied it the adhesion begins immediately this stuff is really good but again i would say that you got to be careful with the quantity that you buy because it does not have a long shelf life in fact it's only a few months i think this one is maybe six months old and the adhesive itself is a solid mass now it is not usable the spray activator is still liquid and it's still usable but the glue itself does not have a long shelf life so you gotta watch out for that and you will notice that when you go to the hardware store that the super glues or the ca glues usually come in really small quantities and there's a reason for that the shelf life is maybe only a couple of months so if you're going to use it for a project only get the amount that you need for that project don't go buying a whole bunch of extra and stocking up because it's really not worth it the last glue that i'll talk about that i use around the shop sometimes is pvc glue not to be confused with pva glue pvc glue is exactly what it is it's for pvc parts and components which is plastic basically this stuff you've seen before if you've done any plumbing it's what you use to join pvc pipes together for example my neighbor and i built a large pvc planter box out front of their house that matches the trim at the front of their house and it looks really beautiful it's completely constructed using deck screws and pvc cement this stuff what it basically does is it welds two pieces of plastic together so once they are joined the surface melts a little bit and they basically melt into each other and they cure rather quickly within 30 minutes it's pretty much fused together so it's really strong stuff it's watertight which is really great it is some smelly stuff it sets off a lot of fumes so be careful when you use it don't use it in a enclosed indoor space try and use it in an area where you have a lot of ventilation it can overwhelm you it's not something you can put in your mouth so don't eat it it's highly flammable so be careful around any flavors or heat but it is really great stuff for the kinds of projects where you're using any kind of pvc material whether it's pipe whether it's pvc trim which is really popular nowadays because it basically lasts forever well that concludes all the glues that i use in the workshop and i'm sure some of you have other experiences with glue and different types of glue please feel free to deposit your comment in the comments section below we'd love to hear from you if you want to help me continue making it these videos head on over to my donation page right over here please remember to like share and subscribe if you haven't done so already there are a couple more videos on this side you can watch until next time thanks for watching and have a great day [Music] ...

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