Do It Yourself

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Natural wood glues, general feedback? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by loops@beehaw.org to c/diy@beehaw.org

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Hello fine people of Beehaw,

I was wondering if any of you could point me in a direction of a natural wood glue I can buy that is, of course, affordable?

I'm making myself a desktop and I'd rather avoid synthetic glues (polyurethane stuff) and finishes, since the whole point is to replace the melamine thing I have now. I was planning on using pine resin pitch to glue up the boards, but my area has been in drought for almost three months now and I'd rather not set fire to the neighbourhood when I'm making the glue.

Meanwhile, I've been tripping over the box that holds the rest of the desk (I won't be making the legs) so I would love any suggestions!

For the finish I'll be using some sort of spirit varnish. In the link they use resin from the Jetoba Tree (aka animé :D) dissolved in >95% alcohol, and apparently this varnish has lasted for centuries on violins, so I think it would be interesting to try it on my desk.

All of this will likely be done with some 5/4 s2s soft maple because it looks pretty and I'm pretty chill with my furniture.

Cheers!

P.S. I live in Canada, PNW.

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[–] toothpicks@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hot hide glue or fish glue maybe? For finishing you could also consider shellac or an oil finish.

[–] Inspectigator@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I second the use of shellac. I've been using shellac on a maple cabinet project I'm working on right now.

Maple is a proper bitch to sand because it's so hard. I wouldn't recommend sanding higher than 180 at most of else you risk glazing the wood, which makes it hard for your finish to work. Also any alcohol finish is going to dry extremely quickly and be very finicky to work with... Particularly on a very large continuous surface like a desk. It's not impossible, but absolutely, definitely, practice first. Figure out your brushes, your mixture, your technique all ahead of time. When you hit that desk there's no turning back and it's go time.

I tried over a dozen different oil and gel based stains for the project, and shellac was far and away the best looking, due to maple's exceptionally tight grain, and high tendency to blotch.

Good luck! I really enjoy working with maple, but boy is it a challenging medium.

[–] mst@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Don't use shellac for tables or furniture you sweat on. It's not water resistant. I had an old desktop with shellac finish, the finish started to dissolve on the parts where my arms rested.