Wood Glue

My preference is for hot glue. We have a table here that was left too near the fire too long, and just started to fall apart. I tried everything, and finished up with screws and clamps.

PVA. Almost any version will do. I'm not a fan of kids' PVA or 'no nonsense' but even those could be used in a pinch. Gluing the base to the sides is a good idea if both aren't wood (typically hardboard base, veneered chipboard sides). If either is real wood, don't do it, they need to move relative to each other.

FWIW I can't imagine hot melt making anything but a mess of it. Gluing the sides together requires zero thickness, and gluing base to sides requires a long run of glue to stay wet/molten before assembly. I would not expect hot melt to manage either - I've not tried it for assembling drawers though.

Can you confirm what materials have been used in this drawer? A cheap, under bed drawer in my house has a melamine-coated chipboard front, something like vinyl skinned chipboard for the base and the sides are just hollow plastic extrusions, cut and folded to make three sides of the drawer. I told you it was cheap! Wood glue wouldn't be much good on that, but if you've got wood/chip/mdf sides and front then wood glue is the way to go. As Animal has said, unless this drawer is made of real wood, glue the base into the recesses on the sides etc as this will definitely strengthen the whole thing.

Nick snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.ca

I did a test, gluing 2 bits of ply: Evostick 5L PVA I'd bought as an additive, and Gorilla wood glue. Pretty much the same.

I just used a generic pva, and clamped stuff together in a sideboard when the old glue dried out some years ago. One needs to be careful to get the corners square, also some tiny nails here and there helped the things stay together for a few days before using the drawers. Of course this was real walnut, not chipboard that looked like walnut on the outside!

Brian

Many thanks for all the replies :-)

The drawer is melamine faced chipboard so PVA glue should work. It crossed my mind I could put one of those plastic connector blocks that were used for flat pack kitchen furniture in each corner to give it some strength, if not right angle brackets would do it.

A glue gun could be helpful for "tack gluing" or spot gluing to hold it together while it sets.

Thanks again!

I've used basic Resin-W for the last fifty years, and have found no need to look for something better.

What does a 'proper' PVA get you, OOI? I've been using Tesco 'school glue' for wood stuff and it's worked fine - is there something different in the Evo-stik varieties?

Theo

There are few significant differences between PVA glues for amateur use. All are stringer than the wood and the usual failure is by the top later of wood fibres tearing out, so all depend on a good flat mating pair of surfaces free of contaminants and clamping pressure to force the glue into the surface fibres.

(unless you are building with balsa, when the open grain is more likely to suck up so much glue that a bond fails to form at all)

I use Evostik Resin W, as its cheap, available and works for me...

Rather use Superglue. I am not a huge fan of hot glue. It softens at altogether too low a temperature to be safe. And it isn't very strong - not as strong as traditional hot 'hide glue'

Its one use is sticking foam plastic model aeroplanes together. It is excellent at that.

The nice thing about hot glue is you can use a hot air gun (or hot air soldering wand) to soften it enough to manipulate it. So if you might need to do fine tweaking of the joint it is possible to do that after the fact.

I've seen superglue + spray activator or superglue + baking soda used for rapid sets, but not tried those combinations myself.

Theo

It can work extremely well, But like everything, you need to experiment a bit first In general, superglue on wood is set in a minute, which isn't a long time to hold stuff together

I've found that on wood, chipboard etc. no nonsense PVA from Screwfix works well. Watered down I also used it successfully in sealing old plaster where its been chased out and sealing old plastered walls where there may be tiny residual bits of distemper paint.