Overheard a cabinet maker say glue is a crutch for bad joinery

Guy at the lumber yard yesterday said glue just hides gaps from sloppy cuts... I've been using Titebond on every joint for 10 years. Now I'm wondering if I should spend more time on fit and less on cleanup. Any of you skip glue on certain joints?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseys3022d ago

That guy at the lumber yard is half right but mostly wrong. I've done enough production work to know a perfectly fit mortise and tenon still needs glue to lock it in for the long haul. The real issue is people who rely on glue to fill an eighth inch gap on a loose joint - that's the crutch. I skip glue on frame and panel doors where the panels float, but everything structural gets it. Even Japanese joinery masters use glue on certain things, they just hide it better.

oliver_mitchell22d ago

Wait, wait, hold up - "Japanese joinery masters use glue on certain things"? That's honestly the first time I've heard that straight from someone who's actually done the work, not just read about it online. I always figured those guys were 100 percent magic with their dry fits and that was the whole point of the craft, you know, the pure wood-on-wood thing. That kind of rattles my brain a little, makes me wonder how much of the stuff I see on YouTube is just for the camera and how much is real life.