You may have noticed from my blog profile that I am interested in Wood Working. I have built all kinds of things, but my favorite is fancy inlay work. I like to make Native American designs using different colors of wood. To make the designs, I first cut very thin strips of wood, as thin as .025" think. It is almost like veneer, but the pieces that I cut the strips from has already has a design in it made from gluing smaller pieces together. This part, I think you could all do or have done. The point of this blog is a "Tip" on what you can do with PVA glue.
PVA glue is the common glue that most of you use now. It is the white or yellow glue that you can buy at the hardware store under many different brands. The PVA glue is mixed with a little water that keeps the glue molecules separated so that they can not "chain" together. As the water in the glue evaporates or sinks into the wood, the glue molecules get closer and closer together until they start to cross link to form the stronger and stronger glue bond. This is called curing and it takes time. After about 20 minutes, the glue bond is strong enough that the clamps or pressure can be removed, but the curing is not complete. It takes a couple of days before the glue is 100% cured. Now this is where the "Tip" comes in.
Here is the problem that I had with the thin material that I was gluing to picture frames and jewelry box lids. The problem with thin material is that you have to have complete pressure over the total area since the wood is so thin that if the wood is not directly under the clamp, there is not enough pressure to hold the thin wood in place. What I do is to spread a thin coat of glue on the plywood base that I use for the jewelry box lid and let it "dry". That is right, I let the glue "dry". I do the same thing for the thin pieces of veneer. Now the pieces can be placed and moved around without them sticking together or any wet glue leaking out. To get the two pieces to bond, all you need to do is to place an ordinary hot cloths iron on top of the veneer and press down. The PVA acts like a hot melt and bonds the form with the same strength as normal PVA.
Since the cure takes upto 48 hours to totally cure, you have at least 24 hours after the glue is applied to bond it with the hot clothes iron. You can do this with paper, fabric or anything that is thin and difficult to glue by any other method. I used to use contact cement, but with that stuff as soon as the two pieces come into contact they bond. The contact cement never cures to the same strength as PVA. PVA can be cleaned up with water and that is a big advantage for most people. One job that I did was to redo my kitchen cabinets by putting Oak veneer over the original pine. There I needed to bond 2" wide strips of veneer to the cabinet faces. With normal methods, I would have needed a 100 clamps, but using the dry PVA, all I needed was a hot clothes iron. I could also move the pieces around so that I could get the fit up exact.
I think that you can follow this "tip" and I think you will discover even more uses.
Happy wood working.
