A pannel bed I am working on has long butt joint with M & T joints at the top and bottom where the styles meet the legs. The butt joint is not required for strenth, but it has .003″ gap. I have worked on the joint for a while and have taken it from a .005″ joint to the .003″ gap. My question is will titebond III fill this gap? And if it will will it add any stenght?
Any other glue suggestions? I am tempted to use PL Premium as I know it will fill this tiny gap and will add stenght (not that I need the strenght, but I mise well have it)
Edited 10/23/2007 2:28 am ET by jeffinvancouver
Edited 10/23/2007 11:09 am ET by jeffinvancouver
Replies
Lee Valley advertises their "Cabinet Maker's Glue 2002 GF" as having as having high solids (45%) and thus great gap filling qualities. They also list good open time and shear strength.
Has anyone had any experience with this product?
Frosty
"I sometimes think we consider the good fortune of the early bird and overlook the bad fortune of the early worm." FDR - 1922
"Has anyone had any experience with this product?"
I've used it, and it works fine, but I didn't really put its gap-filling abilities to the test.
-Steve
If you have to use more than on decimal place then I think it will be ok to use normal wood glue. Is the joint sloppy, a little loose, snug, or tight? Snug would require a few light smacks with a mallet for a larger M&T joint. A little loose could be assembled with firm hand pressure. Sloppy wont stay togather or is too incostant to be sound. Unless it is sloppy, you will be fine with wod glue.
An old trick for loose tennons is to cut a kerf on the end of the tennon all the way to the shoulder, like you would for a wedged M&T but across the wide face. Then insert a thin not-tapered shim that is slightly thicker than the kerf (feel free to use your calipers). It is a good idea to drill a hole where the kerf ends to prevent a split showing in the part.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
Thansk for the tip, The M & T joint are well fit. It is a butt joint adjecent to them that is is .003" out (we are talking thin er then a piece of paper).
This drawing might help explain it better, the arrows point to the joint in question. I also including a pitcure of hwta i am doing for reference.
Are you talking about the shoulders of the tenons being out by 0.003"? A shoulder plane (naturally) is the tool of choice for cleaning those up. The strength of a mortise and tenon joint comes from the face-to-face adhesion between the tenon cheeks and the side walls of the mortise. As long as that part of the joint is well fitted, any gap at the shoulders is inconsequential. To make the joint close up better, you can also undercut the shoulders slightly; this won't compromise the strength of the joint, either.
I remember an old Tage Frid trick of assembling the joint and then running a bow saw along both shoulders to even them up. I would never have the courage to do that, for fear of damaging the mortised piece.
-Steve
Edited 10/23/2007 10:20 am ET by saschafer
Yes the cause of the issue is the should must be .003" higher then the rest of the joint. I have been workingon them, but it is a touchy job. As I need to remove a very smal amoutn of material I am using sand paper instead of a plane. I will undercut the joint aswell as see if this helps.
"As I need to remove a very smal amoutn of material I am using sand paper instead of a plane."
You can remove a very small amount of material with a sharp, well-adjusted plane. The real advantage of using a plane, though, is that the cut line is nice and straight, something that's difficult to achieve with sandpaper in tight quarters.
The attached photo shows a couple of shavings I got using a Lie-Nielsen low-angle block plane (bevel UP, for those who are keeping score) on quartersawn white oak. Each measures about 0.0015" thick (and the plane wasn't even adjusted as finely as it would cut). One of them I made last night, and the other this morning, after fuming the oak with ammonia overnight. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which.
-Steve
.003 is three-thousandths of an inch, not three-hundredths of an inch.
.3 = three-tenths
.03 = three hundredths
.003 = three thousandths
.0003 = three ten-thousandths
A big difference in small numbers.
Dave S
".003 is three-thousandths of an inch, not three-hundredths of an inch."
No, he had it right. He said 0.003", or 1/300 of an inch, which is correct to one significant digit, which is pretty much all you have to work with unless you're using a micrometer.
-Steve
3/1000's of an inch...
from the decimal point to the right, one place is tenths .0
from the decimal point to the right, two places is hundredths .00
from the decimal point to the right, three places is thousandths .000
so .003 is three one thousanths of an inch not 1/300s (decimal would be .0033333333), close - but definitely not the same or numerically correct
Donkey
Thanks for the advice, I don't usaully work with numbers that small.
.003......
If you breathe on that joint for a while, you should be able to close it up.
Why fuss over something so insignificant?Expert since 10 am.
"...but definitely not the same or numerically correct"
No, it is more "correct." It is incorrect to include more significant digits in the result of a computation than are available in the source values.
Example: What is the metric equivalent of 24"? Well, there are 2.54 cm in an inch, so 24" times 2.54 cm equals 60.96 cm, right? Wrong! The correct answer is 61 cm. If you had asked for the metric equivalent of 24.0", then the answer would have been 61.0 cm, and if you had asked for the equivalent of 24.00", then the answer would have been 60.96 cm.
-Steve
I was showing the usage of 1/300 is not the same as .003
"I was showing the usage of 1/300 is not the same as .003"
And I was saying that they are the same. Both notations imply a single significant digit (although 1/300 is admittedly ambiguous), and the two notations are essentially equivalent under those circumstances. When someone says that something has a measurement of 0.003", for example, what that really means is that it is closer to 0.003" than to either 0.002" or 0.004", not that it is exactly equal to 0.003".
Every measurement has a tolerance, and not taking that tolerance into account gets people into trouble all the time. Getting caught up in minutiae involving non-significant digits is at best a waste of time (and is what I was originally responding to). At worst, it causes people to assume the existence of precision that isn't there.
-Steve
".003"
Any bed joint will naturally experience joint separation far greater than this during normal "wear and tear".
Use epoxy for the best gap filling ability. Or glue in veneer. Or sawdust.
Expert since 10 am.
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