I still get many questions from woodworkers about using CA glue for all sorts of different uses and projects and as we use this versatile glue we learn even more of how to better use it and where it is most suited ..
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/PKZNWpjYoXY
You will note that this video has been sponsored by our friends at Starbond who are offering a 25% discount on all their products up until October 20th, 2012 and you MUST use the code - WOODWORKWEB25, and the link to their site is here Starbond Website.
That's a very generous discount .. and for woodworkers in Canada, Mexico, UK, Australia and NZ and more ... I recommend if you can, to link up with other local woodworkers to place an order and share the shipping costs, which I know can be onerous ... just something to consider.
As many of my subscribers, I use disposable paintbrushes, but in my case, I use them mostly for wood glue and even once in a while to apply paint, stains, or poly products. I even reuse them if I remember to clean them, but my biggest problem with some of them is that they often lose bristles when I use them. To fix this problem I take a selection of them and run a bead of CA glue where the bristles attached to the metal ring, turn the brushes up-side-down, and let them harden up. This works like a charm to keep bristles in place instead of trying to pick them off the project you have just coated.
As you can see in the picture above, Starbond Medium Flex has become my new workshop standard. In most cases, the medium is the consistency that works best for things that I do, and to have a glue that is less brittle is perfect for "mechanical" applications. Now when I say mechanical, I am not referring to steel or iron, I am meaning projects where that is an "action" that takes place. A CA glue that has a tiny bit of flex to it will tend to withstand pressures a little bit better than a non-flex glue because it is less brittle.
I saw this idea somewhere ... many years ago, where if you make one 45 degree cut on a dowel, you can rotate it to whatever angle you want so I have made a couple of pencils now for marking inside hard to get at places and the angled pencil makes it easy to make an accurate marking. I last used this method in marking an inside stretcher for length and of course, I couldn't even see where I was marking but it gave me a true edge to cut to. The pencils are a bit hard to sharpen but they never roll off the workbench ..
This is one of my most common uses of CA glue, filling voids, holes, and knots in the wood. To get super accurate I use the fine tips that come with each bottle of Starbond CA glue and that way I can get into the tiniest of cracks and avoid turning them into "wood features". Starbond has a couple of versions of the brown CA glue a slightly lighter version and a darker version and of course, there is black CA glue as well. This means you can fill holes in pretty much any color wood and get good results. Knots can come loose in wood and you can often tell what the know will do by judging any cracks in it. If the cracks radiate out from the center, the knot should remain stable but you should still fill the crack voids with CA glue. If there is no crack or it is around the edge, likely that the knot will fall out, which is the worst-case scenario. In this case, you need to make sure you seal the knot in place with CA glue.
Remember ... it is always best to pick a color that is darker than the knot or the wood voids you are filling. This is because most woods will darken over time and those CA glue voids you filled will blend in even better as time goes on. This is why I try to avoid wood fillers, even homemade wood filler because many fillers will take stains or dyes poorly if at all, and because of the binder in them they don't darken over time which means the repairs remain lighter surrounded by a darker wood. This means anyone can spot the defects from across the room ... something you want to avoid at all costs. Always lean toward a darker tone.
Not everyone has a spindle sander and even if you do, they don't always work out the way we hope, so sometimes I am stuck with hand sanding using sandpaper and a dowel to get the best fit. Easily the best way to do this chore is to have the sandpaper fastened to the dowel, otherwise, with every stroke, the sandpaper moves a bit which defeats the whole purpose of trying to sand. A quick easy way is to attach one side to your dowel and the other side back to the sandpaper. This makes it easier to replace the sandpaper as needed.
Here's another trick I use quite often ... locking rope knots. Sometimes I am making rope handles and want to lock a couple of knots on one side of the wood so it won't pull through and CA glue does such an excellent job of that. These are permanent ways to hold knots unless you want to change them, then if you bash the knot and glue with a hard object you will break the glue and ... with some difficulty ... you can untie the rope.
Thanks again to the nice folks at Starbond for sponsoring this video and supporting the woodworking community with innovative products designed to help woodworkers achieve better results.
Copyright Colin Knecht
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