Andy Brownell’s Glue Creep Study

There are many things in woodworking that are taken as dogma. You can never use another  finish over shellac with any wax in it.  Dovetails are the only joint allowed on fine furniture casework. And, if you want to get a solid bond on joints under stress, you can never use yellow PVA ‘carpenter’ glues. After all, they all ‘creep’ under pressure, right?

While these are good general rules of thumb, isn’t it great that there are people out there testing to see if they are 100% incontrovertible fact, or just general ‘known facts’ that can be broken.  Andy Brownell is a man on a mission to see if yellow glues truly make unacceptable joints.

To get to the bottom of this, he has set up quite the experiment. Using glues of different formulations from different manufacturers, he’s gluing up a variety of wood species to see how each performs.

This will be an ongoing experiment, so be sure to stop by to check out how things are progressing!