Glue

[Anonymous]

Which is the best all round glue to use please

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi Widget
Best for what purpose? If you want sensible answers we need a bit more to go on.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

I need a good all round wood glue , what do you guys use
i have seen the yellowish stuff on the yankee workshop norm seems to use all the time . That sort of glue

 

[Aragorn]

For wood-to-wood I'll mostly use any old PVA based glue. My local hardware shop sells Everbuild, whose newest offering is a waterproof PVA glue that sets in 10 minutes.
Before that I used the older Everbuild, and before that Evostick, but realised I was paying for a name and switched.

I also use a polyurethane glue for some applications, no-nails or gripfill for construction work.

Also, never under-estimate Pritt stick :wink:

 

[Keith Smith]

I must admit to never seeing Norm as I don't have Sky but I would imagine he uses Titebond. I've been using Titebond 3 recently and it seems ok. Not tested it to destruction though......not yet anyway :lol:

Keith

 

[Steve Maskery]

OK

For quick progress where assemblies are easy I use PU glue. It sets in a few minutes. COmes in a green bottle with an offset nozzle, can't remember what it's called, but is widely available. Gorilla glue is also good but has a much longer curing time.

For "ordinary" work where time is not important I use PVA from my local timberyard. Cheap and perfectly OK. Comes on a yellow bottle, can't remember what it's called either. Screwfix also sell cheap PVA for everyday use.

For small tricky jobs I use a cyanoacrylate. The clock in my avatar has the neck glued to the base in this way. Would have been very difficult to clamp, but with a 12 second cure, it's easy.

For complex glue-ups I use Extramite (although my tub still has Cascamite printed on it).

My best glue tip is:
Buy the cheap glue bottles from Axminster. I use the plain one and the biscuit one, both excellent.

Horses for courses.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

many thanx guys

 

[Anonymous]

norm tends to use titebond, as alluded to above; there are various flavours of titebond, all with different properties, but at the end of the day, titebond is just a brand name, and the glue TYPE is what metters.

General PVA will do for most applications, with some caveats. It's not waterproof, even the so called outdoor flavours; its grab time is not particularly quick, which can be both a good and a bad thing. its set time is long, typically 24 hours for full cure. But, once cured, a decent quality pva will be stronger than the wood itself.

Polyurethane (like gorilla, or titebond III (I think)) glues - waterproof, fast grab and cure time. Gap filling, although the gap fill has no strength, so shouldn't be used to fix a sloppy joint. Stains fingers badly! Limited shelf life. Cures by absorbing water from the surrounds, so not good for biscuit joinery, cos biscuits work by also absorbing water to swell and fill the slots.

Traditional hide glues - don't know much about these, but 1 main advantage is that joints glued with this can be split at a later date, for repairs or whatever, by exposing to steam. Which, of course, indicates they're not waterproof, and not suited to humid environment like kitchen or bathroom.

There are all the contact glues out there for 'instant' grab and cure - limited use in woodworking, I'd have thought.

Extramite is a powdered glue (mix with water) with a reasonable open time and pretty quick cure time - as in 'kick around workshop within half hour' - useful if time's short, or you're fed up of glueing up and having to wait 24 hours to move on to next stage. I think you may be able to get this pre-mixed too.

Urea-formaldehyde (UF) is another major type of glue, about whiich I know nothing.

Anyway - if you want a general purpose, indoor use glue, PVA is the way to go. And there ARE flavours out there with shortened grab and cure times for the impatient.

[EDIT - extramite (powder form) is a UF type of glue, i've just found]

 

[Anonymous]

thanks again
BTW Steve i love the display table

 

[Steve Maskery]

Extramite is a powdered glue (mix with water) with a reasonable open time and pretty quick cure time - as in 'kick around workshop within half hour' - useful if time's short, or you're fed up of glueing up and having to wait 24 hours to move on to next stage.

Really? Have they changed the formulation? If so, I must get some new stuff, mine is a big bucket I bought years ago! (Hence the Cascamite label). It states that open time is 3 hours and curing time 6 hours. Personally I've found the 3 hour open claim to be vastly over-optimistic, but if it can be "kicked around the workshop" in half an hour, that would be an improvement, provided that the open time isn't just a couple of minutes as well.

What does it say on your bucket?

Cheers
Steve (shortly to leave for exotic Arabia - camping in the Atlas Mountains in February - SWMBO's idea, go figure).

 

[Noel]

Wid, much as has been said. Just to recap on the Titebond range: Original Titebond (red botle) general carpenters yellow glue, Titebond II (blue bottle) water resistant, Titebond 3 (green bottle) water proof, or at least that is the manufacturers claim. Titebond also do polyurethane, synthetic hide glue, lots of others including extended opening time etc.
As Steve has mentioned ordinary PVA at half the price of Titebond is good for most run of the mill jobs. Personally speaking I use Titebond Original .Flows well, nice grab and the bottles are the best on the market. No fathing about with caps and nails trying to clear the dried bits.....The self sealing and self clearing caps are great.So much so that I often fill the empty bottle with cheap PVA.....

 

[Philly]

Widget
I use "Norms" glue-original Titebond, the yellow one. It dries quickly and doesn't seem to have as much "creep" as the white PVA's. Also it is easy to remove squeeze-out.
Cheers
Philly

 

[Anonymous]

Steve,

The 'kick around the workshop in half an hour' is a quote I've seen about the premixed flavour of extramite - it may be that that isn't the same formula as the extramite/cascamite powder, as sold by screwfix and other builders type merchants. A year or so ago, i spent quite a lot of time trying to find something that was inbetween PVA and PU for grab and cure time, and found that quote from a review off the Humbrol site (IIRC) - humbrol being the people who make extramite.

Interesting you've managed to keep a tub of cascamite for so long - it's been extramite for at least 3 years, and i was under the impression it had a limited shelf life, even in powder form! you live and learn, eh?

cheers,
~esp

 

[Anonymous]

Widget
I use "Norms" glue-original Titebond, the yellow one. It dries quickly and doesn't seem to have as much "creep" as the white PVA's. Also it is easy to remove squeeze-out.
Cheers
Philly

the only thing I'm not sure about this is...original yellow glue was the traditional carpenters glue, but i did hear that a lot of the modern yellow glues were just PVA (white) with some yellow dye. I don't recall if that rumour applied to titebond, or was just a general warning about yellow glues. You got any insight on that?

 

[Steve Maskery]

i was under the impression it had a limited shelf life, even in powder form!

I've had it a lot longer than 3 years, I can assure you!
I always understood it to have an "indefinite" shelf-life (don't quote me on that), and it's true I haven't used it for a while (perhaps that's why I don't get the 3 hour open time - but then I never did, even when it was new) but the previous batch was also ancient when it ran out, and I never had any problems with that either.
The biggest problem with ExtraCascaMite is that you do have to be careful mixing it. For small jobs that means an electronic scale, as they recommend measuring by weight. I'm more of a stir-it-up-til-it-looks-right sort of bloke.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

lol - sounds like we're swapping 'hearsay' here Steve - we need Scrit - he was always a font of loads of knowledge regarding glue types!

 

[Anonymous]

could i get any of these from say the B&Q or do i need to send of for it
cheers

 

[Philly]

Esp
Yeah, some of the "yellow" pva's are probably just dyed white pva (hope they didn't use Sudan 1). Titebond 1 is definitely different-if feels watery and doesn't seem to have so much plasticy feel to it. This one definitely has the least creep-on table tops I have found over time that glue lines that were previously invisible become slightly raised. You can feel it when running your fungers over the piece.
Just my 10p worth
Philly

 

[Steve Maskery]

You can get ordinary PVA anywhere. As for the rest, I don't know about B&Q, but certainly most timberyards and builder's merchants will have the PU and Extramite. You could try searching B&Q's website, diy.com

Cheers
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Widget

Carry out a search on the forum as Chris (Waterhead) posted a couple, of superb articles on here about various glues after he had experimented at some length with many of them. I printed these out and keep them in my workshop - they are THAT useful!