I am in the process of building an entertainment center for a client. It will be made up of 5 torsion boxes in a cantilevered design. I am using 1/4″ mdf for the skins, and 3/4″ poplar for the interior gridwork in the boxes. Then 1/4″ maple wrapped around the sides and finally veneered top and bottom.
The largest 3 boxes will be 2 3/4″ thick 18″ wide and between 30 and 60″ long. THe 2 smaller boxes will be 2″ thick 17″ wide and 40″ long.
I will be glueing and nailing/screwing the skins to the grids, and was wondering about glue. Will PVA work well, or should I go to a resin based adhesive? When veneering, I use titebond II and hve had no problems.
Any advice/insight would be appreciated.
Peter
Edited 1/6/2008 7:43 pm by jptenberg
Replies
PVA should be fine. In a torsion box, the load is distributed over such a large area that just about any adhesive will work.
-Steve
PVA is really almost as strong as epoxy and is more than adequant to hold the torison box together. If you still don't feel cofortable using PVA, try type II PVA(Titebond III) It is slightly stronger than normal PVA.
-Peter
PVA is fine. For the indepth info on making torsion boxes read
MORE Woodworkers' Essential Facts, Formulas & Short-Cuts: Hundreds of All New, No-Math Rules of Thumb Help You Figure it Out (Woodworker's Essentials & More series) by Ken Horner
Also Ian Kirby wrote the first definitive article on torsion boxes in FWW years ago. Much better process than David Marks version. Torsion boxes are quick and easy to make.
I recent made a torsion box entertainment unit. I used PVA glue for everything. I veneered with a 2 part cross linking PVA. But one problem I ran into was when I nailed filler blocks in. When I have to make cuts and joinery I found myself running into brad nails. If that doesn't bother you then all is good. But I got up set because it chipped blades and domino bits.
Kaleo
http://www.kaleosworkshop.com
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