Gluing Both Sides of a Joint

Article - January 2, 2007

This article was inspired by a question from Dick. He writes:

I noticed on your cutting board tutorial, you put glue only on one side of the joint. I’ve always glued both sides, whether it’s a cutting board or table top. Is that overkill?

In my opinion, gluing both sides of a joint is absolutely not overkill. In fact, I consider it a “best practice” and I nearly always apply glue to both sides, whether it’s a panel glue-up or a mortise and tenon joint. In the case of the cutting board, I only glued one side because it made things much faster. Since I knew it would take a lot of time to get my cauls in the perfect position, I needed to save time wherever I could. Had I not taken this precaution, I would have been sweating bullets and racing the clock. The fact that I have dry Arizona air really speed ups the dry time of woodworking glue. So that’s really the only time I put glue on only one side of a joint: when I need to save time.

If you’re ever going to try this, there are a couple things to keep in mind. First is the amount of glue. Normally I put a light coating on both pieces, so it only makes sense that when coating only one surface, we should use a little more glue. When the two surfaces make contact, the glue will spread to the second surface and any excess will squeeze out. You can improve the effectiveness of the glue transfer by rubbing the joint. By rubbing the two pieces back and forth, not only will the glue distribute nicely, you’ll also pull the pieces together via a phenomenon known as cohesion. With good even clamping pressure, the joint should suffer no ill effects of initially having glue on only one surface.

To sum up, I recommend putting glue on both sides of every joint. But if you’re pressed for time and dealing with a tricky glueup, you just might want to consider putting glue on only one side and following the steps outlined above.

Discussion

Graham February 16, 2016 9:05 pm

Hi Mark, do you have any tips for building an end grain butcher block with a herringbone pattern? The glue up and race against time are going to be tricky, and I’m not quite sure how to approach clamping. Sort of have to build the whole thing at once, as far as I can figure. If you have any tips they would be greatly appreciated.

Reply
- Steven Ventura July 17, 2020 10:40 am
  
  To put it simply, glue individual pieces up together first. Imagine your butcher block as a grid of pieces. At most simple its all one block. At its most complex, its all the individual blocks of a butcher block. Choose a reasonable division, maybe 4X4 blocks, to glue up at a time. When those blocks have fully dried, then glue up the 4X4 blocks together in reasonable divisions as well, maybe 1X2 blocks, to slowly build up your butcher block. Given the possible misalignment from gluing, some touch up might be needed with a planer or sanding. I know this is a late response and you have probably already completed your project, but I hope this helps someone in the future.
  
  Reply

Gluing Both Sides of a Joint

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