When it comes time for assembly, you’ll grab your trusty glue bottle. But just as you wouldn’t build cabinets strictly from one type of material or wood, you shouldn’t rely on one glue for all your assemblies. Having said this, about 90 percent of my furniture goes together with ordinary woodworking white glue. Technically a polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue, this glue comes in white and yellow varieties. White glue generally offers more open time (the time you have once you’ve spread the glue to get all the joints together), making it useful for complex assemblies. And like all the glues for wood-working, it’s plenty strong for its intended purpose.
Other glues offer other compelling char-acteristics, such as the ability to take the work apart when you need to by nature of its reversibility, increased moisture resistance, or even waterproofness. The chart opposite helps you select the right glue for the job.
[TI P] Many glues have a shelf life of 1 year; some less. Look for a manufacture date on the glue you buy; if there isn’t one, write the date you bought the glue on the bottle. Dating your glue lets you know how fresh it is.
When you need a higher degree of accuracy, such as when marking out dovetails, the fine line left by a marking knife is best.
To keep track of parts in a project, you’ll need some system of marking. I use a tri-angle and a straight line. You can make up
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A marking knife is the most accurate method of trans-ferring layout lines.
Mark the edges of your parts with tri-angle symbols so you can orient the faces and edges glue to modern synthetics that bond instantly.
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is enough? A good rule of thumb is use enough glue so that you see an even bead squeeze out from the assembled joint.
Once you’ve chosen an adhesive, you need to learn the balance between using too much and using too little, because each approach has its respective drawback. Too little glue and you risk starving the joint line, especially when the pressure from clamps spreads the glue away from the joint. The result is a joint that’s likely to fail. It’s better to err on the side of too much glue, but not to the point that you have a gooey mess on your hands. Excess glue that’s not removed will always haunt you later when it shows up as a bland smear under any finish. So how much
Timely Glue Characteristics
Type Open Time Clamp Time Comments
PVA (yellow and white) 3 min. to 5 min. 1 hr. General woodworking;
water cleanup
Cross-linking (type II 3 min. 1 hr. Good outdoors;
water resistant) water cleanup
Hot hide glue Unlimited, Limited Hammer veneer work;
with heat reversible
Cold (liquid) hide glue 30 min. 12 hr. Reversible with heat
and water
Polyurethane 20 min. 2 hr. Moisture resistant;
foams during cure Plastic resin (resin 20 min./20 min. 1 hr./12 hr. Moisture resistant;
powder/water powder) veneer and bent
laminations Two-part epoxy 1 min./1+ hr. 30 sec./24 hr. Doesn’t shrink;
(fast/slow) laminations;
submersible
Cyanoacrylate glue 5 sec. 5 sec. Quick fix for small
(Super Glue) parts; filling cracks
Contact cement 30 min. to 3 hr. Immediate bond Plastic laminate work
Hot-melt glue 15 sec. Temporary hold Jig and template
making
Working Wood 39 When applying
glue, shoot for an even bead of squeeze-out after clamping.
40
T
o work wood with confidence and build furniture you’ll be proud of, it’s important to have a funda-mental grasp of furniture design. Although designing good furniture is always a life-long challenge, the essence of it is dead simple.When I make furniture or cabinets, I fol-low a fundamental principle of form folfol-low- follow-ing function. In plain English, this means the furniture has to be used by real people in a comfortable and satisfying manner, yet the piece should be pleasing to the eye. Using this theory, I’m careful to make sure a piece will work first, before considering its final shape or form. Think about how the piece will be used. For example, you wouldn’t make the height of a desk incompatible with the chair used to sit in front of it. The chart at left lets you zero in on these important measurements.
Once you know the essential size of a piece, start with a sketch. Please note: You don’t need formal training to sketch a proj-ect. The goal is to get down on paper the essential idea of the piece you want to make, so you can study it. Even crudely drawn, these sketches are full of energy and vitality.
Later, refer back to your sketch to check your progress.
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Average Furniture Sizes
Furniture Height Depth Length/Width
(in.) (in.) (in.)
Tables
Coffee 14–18 18–24 36–60
Card/game 29 30 30
End 30 15 24
Hall 30–40 15 24–40
Writing 30 24 36–40
Kitchen 30–32 30 42
Dining 29–32 42 60–84
Chairs
Desk/task 161⁄2 16–18 16–20
Dining 16–18 16–18 16–18
Couch/lounge 14–18 18–24 24–90
Cabinets
Buffet 30 16–24 48–72
China/display 54–60 12–22 Any
Kitchen 32–36 12 or 24 Any
Other
Chests 32–54 24 Any
Bookcases 32–82 14–18 Any
Desks 30 24–30 40–60
Designing
Furniture
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impact, build a full-size mock-up to visual-ize the real proportions of a piece. Make your mock-ups from common materials, such as 2x stock, rigid cardboard, and screws; then alter and change them until you like what you see.
Partly for their design value and partly for the building information they contain, I often make a set of working drawings, showing side and front views (elevations) and the top view. Your drawings can be full-size or scaled down and drawn with a ruler and a 30/60/90-degree drafting triangle, available from art-supply stores.
Besides helping you visualize a piece, a working drawing can help you generate a cutting list should you need one.
Designing Furniture 41 Now go build something. Of course,
you’ll use the right materials and sound joinery. And I guarantee, the next piece you make will be better. And the next from thereon.
To refine your design skills, there are things to think about as you build your fur-niture. Consider appearance, proportions, balance, line, shape, mass, color, and texture.
These ingredients combine to create a pleas-ing piece of furniture. You’ll figure all this out on your own.
There’s always a risk involved with jump-ing in and designjump-ing as you go. Thjump-ings may not work out. For a safer, more traditional route, you can develop a model and do some experimentation before building the real thing. For example, if you’re designing a set of speakers, you might want to test the acoustical properties of various woods. Or a new door design might prompt you to experiment with various methods of hing-ing. To build these test models, use scrap wood and hold parts together with screws, hot-melt glue, or even tape.
Scale models are another test and can help you define a look before you commit. Dimen-sion your parts carefully, using an architect’s rule to determine accurate scale.
Scrap pieces of thin wood, plywood, MDF, cardboard—whatever you can get your hands on—make great materials for building these miniature portraits. Assemble with hot-melt or cyanoacrylate glue, and stand back to judge proportions and overall feel.
Sometimes, a scale model won’t give you a feel for the actual piece. For the most
Scale models can help you work out the proportions of a project. A scale ruler, or architect’s rule (foreground), lets you transfer full-size dimensions to an appropriate scale size.
See “Using Cutting Lists” on p. 37.
➤
Designing Furniture 42
more stable quartersawn wood for wide, unsupported panels, such as tabletops that aren’t held to a rigid frame underneath.
(For more in-depth information on specific wood species and their characteristics, see Understanding Wood, R. Bruce Hoadley, The Taunton Press.)
Allowing for wood movement is the key to building furniture that lasts. One of the best solutions, and perhaps most ancient, is making a frame-and-panel door. This savvy system relies on a narrow, grooved frame to house a wide panel. As the panel moves in response to changing moisture levels, it’s free to change dimensions inside the grooves of the frame, swelling and shrinking without cracking or busting apart the frame.
Other strategies include aligning the grain of different parts of a case with each other. For example, if you orient the grain on the sides of a case vertically, the grain should run from side to side on the top and bottom.
As the cabinet gains or loses moisture, the parts of the cabinet move in unison. Gluing or orienting parts cross-grain is a recipe for disaster, but there are exceptions. For exam-ple, gluing a mortise-and-tenon joint is fine.
The joint remains tight because the cross-grain members are relatively narrow. And narrow stock (3 in. to 4 in. or less) moves very little. On wide stock, in which move-ment is considerable, one part swells and shrinks, pushing and pulling on its adjacent member relentlessly. Cracks or joint failure is the inevitable result. Even heavy buildups of finish can act like glue in the wrong place, promoting cracks.
Although a finish can’t stop wood move-ment, don’t overlook its protective powers.
Any finish, including nondrying finishes