A solvent should lift surface oils from the wood. A good way to gauge this is by checking the towel that you’re using to wipe the solvent to see if it’s changed to the wood’s color. Secondly, you have to be sure that the solvent you’re using is actually dissolving and removing the wood’s oils. This is because the wood’s oils will tend to migrate back to the surface of the wood where you removed some of the oils. But you have to be sure of two things: first, you should try to glue the pieces of wood to be joined as soon as possible after the solvent has evaporated from the wood surface. While it’s not a cure-all, wiping the wood with a solvent first goes a long way. Since the primary problem that tropical woods present in gluing is their oiliness, (with density probably being the second biggest problem), any of these natural oils and resins that you can remove from the wood surface will help the glue adhere that much better. 1.) Wipe the wood surface with a solvent prior to gluing. ![]() On the whole, employing these tips should result in generally stronger, longer-lasting glue joints in oily woods. Please note that these are some solutions that can help give consistent results in gluing troublesome woods but it is by no means a cure-all that is guaranteed to work every time, with all wood species and with all types of wood joints. So what can be done about this unpredictable nature of wood? Some Solutions: It would be preferable if the objects which we are building would stay in one piece! Sometimes an oily wood can be glued with regular yellow glue with no problems, and in the next instance, the glue joint will almost fall apart on its own. But for most intents and purposes, in the short amount of time that is elapsed in the gluing process, so little of the glue sinks down into the wood grain that it is essentially waterproof, or perhaps more accurately, glueproof.īetween different types of wood, and even within the same species of wood, there can be a lot of variability in oil/resin content, and gluing success/difficulty. They’re technically not waterproof: since all wood, (even the Cocobolo pictured above), contains some degree of moisture that changes depending upon the relative humidity of the surrounding air. It should be plain to see that this wood, (along with a handful of other tropical species), appear to be nearly waterproof. Water beads up on the surface of Cocobolo.Ībove you can see a picture of untreated, raw Cocobolo, which was misted with a spray bottle full of regular water. It would then stand to reason that if conventional wood glues need to penetrate into the wood in order to obtain a strong bond, then these oily woods would present a challenge in gluing. ![]() Many tropical hardwoods are so oily or resinous that they’re practically waterproof. Conventional wood glues like Titebond are water-based, and they rely on penetrating into the grain of the wood, and then (once the water has evaporated) hardening, leaving a bond that is in many instances stronger than the wood itself.
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