Bookmatching veneer question

[Chris Padilla]

Ive done several hundred sq.ft. Of 1/16" shop sawn veneer over the past 10 years with Lee Valley's GF2002 pva glue which is similar in concept to the better bond pva and I have had no failures to date. Not disputing JT's experience at all, just another data point.

Well there is a second example of 1/16" shop-sawn veneer staying put. What species of wood, John?

IMO, wood > 1/16" is NOT veneer and will act more like regular hardwood in terms of movement.

[John Lanciani]

Well there is a second example of 1/16" shop-sawn veneer staying put. What species of wood, John?

IMO, wood > 1/16" is NOT veneer and will act more like regular hardwood in terms of movement.

QS hard maple, quilted soft maple and QS sycamore for the most part. All fairly stable woods, book matched onto panels up to 24" wide for cabinet doors and drawer fronts.

[John TenEyck]

The two projects where I used Better Bond were with white oak, 1/16" thick, on a Baltic birch substrate and the joints were not pre-glued. The Better Bond directions say you can pull the glued up panel out of the vacuum bag after only an hour. I made a test panel following those directions; all looked good until the next morning. All the joints were curled open something awful. I should have just gone back to PRG right then but I was hoping the Better Bond would allow a faster cycle time through the shop. So I made another test panel and left it in the bag for 4 hours. It looked good, and continued to look good for a week so I went ahead with the two projects I had, both with rift sawn white oak. Four to six months later I got a call from my client saying the small table tops I had made "looked funny". So I went to look at them. Sure enough, the joints were starting to curl up. I replaced them, offered my apologies, and concluded Better Bond has no place with shop sawn veneer. Since then I've started gluing the seams before gluing the veneer to the substrate. I don't know if that would have eliminated the seam curling problem with the Better Bond glue. Maybe, but I'm not going back to find out.

The good news is I've been able to reduce the cycle time with PRG by putting a heating blanket under my vacuum bag and another over the top. I'm usually able to hit the right temp. to pull the panel in less than 6 hours, which allows two cycles per day.

John

[Nick Decker]

I tried Better Bond on a couple of small projects, box lids, but using commercial veneer. The instructions said to leave it clamped NO MORE THAN an hour. I thought that odd, and emailed Joe about it. He said that leaving it clamped longer than that could cause mold. New one on me.

The annoying thing was that the dark solids (ground pecan shells, IIRC) sunk to the bottom of the container, and the thickness made it next to impossible to shake them back into the mixture. Titebond had always worked well for me, so I went back to that.

[Chris Padilla]

I used the dark BB for the walnut and the lighter one for some maple. It is interesting that some of us have done well with it and others aren't going to touch it again. I dunno what's up. Bad batches? Bad wood? Operator error? ???