Boy am I stupid

[Frank D.]

sometimes. I'm making the countertop for my vanity out of birch ply, and I want it 1" thick. So I thought I'd throw together a few pieces of ply with some yellow glue and just sit on them till they held. So here I am laying face down spread out on the plywood realizing this isn't going to work. I get up and start throwing anything heavy that comes to hand on top, compressor, horizontal mortiser, anvil, wood, clamps, and I lay down on top of that and realize even more that this isn't going to work. So I take everything off and start doing the pogo. Each time I jump I can hear the plywood layers unsticking. Until finally there's a 1/16" gap between the sheets that I just can't get rid of, so I light up a smoke and figure out how I'll cut it up to throw it in the garbage. The worst is that this has happened to me a few times before. Sigh. Confidence is great until it backfires...
Frank

 

[Travis Byrne]

Hello Frank
You are not the oly one who has put their body in motion and left their brain in neutral :wink: I have this friend who was doing a simular glue up.
He put glue between the 2 pieces and some more ply on top of that then drove his car on top of that. He said it worked, but I have been lied to before. :twisted:
On the sunny side, just think how much smarter you are now as compared to before glueup started
Travis

 

[Aragorn]

He put glue between the 2 pieces and some more ply on top of that then drove his car on top of that. He said it worked...

He didn't also say this happened on April 1st, did he?? :wink: :wink:

 

[devonwoody]

I think the best way would have been to make a series of dovetail dadoes and dovetails splines across the sheets. Bound to work.

 

[Chris Knight]

Face gluing large areas can be very difficult. You need cauls that distribute the pressure evenly and which ensure it reaches the centre. Otherwise, for ply, a vacuum system works pretty well.

 

[Frank D.]

Hi everyone, I hope you had a good laugh, I did and now I feel better. I've decided to just go with some screws from the bottom and that's all. I've done a few countertops like this and it's plenty strong. Of course I should have done the glue-up with contact cement, but I'll save myself the hassle and it'll be reversible in case I screw up something again.

 

[johnelliott]

Here's a good trick for another time- Get your two pieces of ply and a good straight edge. Both pieces will be slightly crowned, and the straight edge will tell you which face is convex and which face is concave. Put the two pieces convex face to convex face , apply the glue and clamp around the edges. That should pretty much do it.
Naturally you can only glue two pieces at a time with this method
Got perfectly flat ply, good for you, I've never seen any myself
John