Good glue for dense oily wood?

[Tom Solomon]

Tiring to find a good glue for Ipe (EE-Pay) for exposure to the weather. I have tried Poly glues, a couple of Epoxy glues with no luck for the long term. Gorilla glue worked at best Ok for inside exposure on this wood, outside it failed within a month. Epoxy glues lasted a little longer as long as it didn't get over 90 (I live in Florida that doesn't happen much). So if someone has any suggestions I would love to hear from you. For those who don't know of Ipe (EE-Pay) it is a Brazilian hard wood with a A-1 fire rating (Same as concrete and steel) and is extremely dense and the oil in the wood NEVER dries completely, even after kiln dried. Hope someone can help.

[Russ Filtz]

With the Gorilla, did you wipe the wood down completely with alcohol or similar to wick out as much oil as possible before gluing? This is a must with oily woods prior to gluing up.

[Tom Solomon]

yep I used Denatured alcohol on all glued surfaces and I think that the wood is just so dense that the glue has nowhere to penetrate, this wood is over 2x as dense as mehogany, and it even sinks when thrown into water.. hehe. ty for the reply..

[Russ Filtz]

Plates and bolts then! If you can drill it!

[Tom Solomon]

Oh it can and has to be predrilled most people in my area won't work with it because they all say it is so hard on thier tools, I tell them just keep them sharp and there are no problems.. and another good thing about this wood is it last up to 30 years unprotected in the sun and termites won't touch it. all I have found to use as a sealer on it in mesmers UV varnish won't even stick to it it blisters right off of it.. but being the hard head I am I still love working with it. it is always a good way to keep myself out of trouble.

[Benjamin Dahl]

I think I remember watching a this old house episode where they used an outdoor or marine rated liquid nails product and then just a few finish nails (with hole pre-drilled) per board. not sure what long term results they had but might want to look at that.
Ben

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Gorilla Glue was designed for exactly that sort of application on Teak, Ebony etc., in high humidity milieu.

However you must use a solvent like mineral spirits to get the oil off the wood. I use Mineral spirits and lacquer thinner in that order and then sometimes I flash it with a propane torch to get the solvent off. Most folks are more patient and just wait. A heat gun wouldn't work because it'd heat the wood enough to liberate more oil leaving you are where you started.

Some folks use alcohol ans they say it works but, I've never considered that since alcohol does not dissolve oils and fats.

I use regular Titebond type glue and not the gorilla glue because I think the stuff stinks and yellow glue has not ever failed me.

[Jake Helmboldt]

Tom, the latest Fine Woodworking just did a comparison of glue strength, and they included ipe as one of their test woods. I believe it was regular old PVA that did the best, and they were surprised by that.

I'm getting ready to build an ipe deck and if I have to glue anything I plan to use Titebond III since it is made for exterior applications and fared well on their ipe test. Hopefully their results are indicative of long-term strength as well.

[Jules Dominguez]

I won't try to cover all of the info in the "How Strong Is Your Glue?" FWW article that Jake mentioned, but it's worth getting a copy and reading it. Three woods (maple, oak and ipe) were used to make identical joints - one each snug fit, average fit, and loose fit - using six different types of glue. The glued joints were allowed to "rest" for three weeks after being assembled, and then tested in a lab at Case Western Reserve University. There was no mention made of any effort to remove oil from the ipe. I'm sure it would have been mentioned if they had done so. Type 1 PVA produced the strongest joints with ipe, and polyurethane tested out to be useless in a loose fitting joint. The Type 1 PVA/ipe combination produced the strongest of all of the joints tested, for all three fits.

[DAVID CASHDAN]

http://www.glueoakandteak.com/

website for gluing oily wood


dave

[Ryan Myers]

I have bought some teak furniture from Wood Classics. They shipped the kit with Titebond II. It has held for four year so far.

[James Kuhn]

I've had good luck glueing Ipe:

-I've tried a few different solvents to clean off the oils prior to glueing and nothing comes even close to acetone.

-Wet both surfaces with well mixed epoxy as sson as the solvent evaporates.

-Smear both surfaces with a heavy syrup of equal parts epoxy and fine Ipe sawdust.

-Clamp tight enough to get moderate squeeze out but not so much that you end up starving the joint.

-Keep clamped for full day.

[Richard Butler]

I've had good luck glueing Ipe:

-I've tried a few different solvents to clean off the oils prior to glueing and nothing comes even close to acetone.

-Clamp tight enough to get moderate squeeze out but not so much that you end up starving the joint.

-Keep clamped for full day.

Acetone is the only way to go. Don't even mess with anything else.

Hand sand the surfaces to be glued with 100 grit across the grain.

When I glued up my Ipe workbench, I used polyurethane glue. I ran several joint tests before I actually glued up the workbench. If I forgot to wipe down the joint with acetone, sand it, and wipe it down again, the glue would fail before the wood. If i did everything right, the Ipe itself would come apart before the glue did. I considered epoxy for the bench, but decided it was not worth it. In your case I would go with epoxy.

[Cary Swoveland]

Lee Valley sells a "G-2" epoxy that is "formulated to work well on oily and acidic woods...": http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...at=1,110,42965

Cary

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

-I've tried a few different solvents to clean off the oils prior to glueing and nothing comes even close to acetone.

Acetone should work very well and it evaporates quickly which is a big bonus. I almost never have any around.

And this reminds me that once I had some Naptha around and tried that. It worked very well to eliminate the oil and it evaporated almost instantly.