Projects Coming Full Circle: Glue Up

Good morning folks!

The Glue Up:

With the planks at final thickness and width it was time for the glue up. My assembly table, you might recognize as my Breakfast Nook Table from one of my previous projects.

A quick note: My wife’s grandmother gave us the most beautiful antique dining set when we moved back home and there was no way to justify still using my table. I couldn’t be happier though since now we have an outstanding dining set and I finally get an assembly table. Glues now move from my table saw to a more rust resistant surface, it has a thick poly finish meaning glue pops right off, and the best part, my planer has a place to permanently set instead of having the lift that monstrosity and kill my back every time I need to thickness a board.

I am lucky enough to own several Bessey parallel clamps which make panel glue ups a breeze. Three clamps lay up on the table to accept the planks, glue is applied to each edge of the boards, light pressure is added on each clamp. Then I place a clamp in between the face up clamps on the table to put pressure on top; preventing cupping is crucial at this stage so putting equal pressure from both top and bottom gives me the best chance for a flat panel glue up. You might notice that I do not have any vertical clamps to keep the board even with each other. I have two sets of panel clamp hardware but haven’t been able to remake actual clamping board yet; I’m sure I will get around to it someday or I might build Shannon Rogers’ version of panel clamps.  But in the mean time since I didn’t full engage the clamps I was able to shift the planks with my fingers until they felt flush to the touch. The long beads of glue squeeze out gave me great promise that the joints were nice and tight; seeing that I jointed on side of each board by hand I had a bit of doubt they joints were going to be square enough.

Thank you following along with the build. Stay tuned for more projects from the PlaneOleWoodShop. If you have any questions or advice for myself or other viewers please feel free to leave a comment below.