Thank you for sharing this. I bought some cheap 18mm birch ply sandwich boards from a wood recycling shop and didn’t realise they were bowed until I got home. I have a project that needs a 36mm sheet, and having holes doesn’t really matter, so I’m going to try this method to glue them together at home. Maybe I’ll make a video about it as part of the overall project!
I feel that using a combination of cauls & clamps plus several jugs of water, weights, bricks, etc would be quicker than screws. It saves you screws, time and additional frustration of repairing holes / blowouts.
😅 Ya I've been doing blender videos for a bit too long that most of my channel is blender but It will self correct with a bit of time back to a maker channel
When I made my work table for the garage, instead of laminating entire sheets, I used scrap pieces of formwork plywood from work with the hard surface planed off. I cut the scrap pieces into 42mm strips about 1300mm long ( as it was reclaime wood, the pieces weren't uniform in length) and glued them together 3 at a time. When the glue had dried, I planed them again to get them square enough for the next step, glueing them together 3-4 at a time before finally glueing them to the final width of 840mm and squaring the ends to a final length of 1240mm. After sanding the surfaces, I gave the table top 4 coats of flooring laquer to get a strong smooth surface with a nice satin finish. It was a heck of a lot of work, but it looks amazing, and only cost me some glue and a small can of laquer. :)
@@Keep-Making It certainly looks awesome, being able to see every single ply across the whole top, but man, what a monumental task for a weekend hobbyist like me! And it was during the process that I came to the same conclusion as so many others before me: There is no such thing as "too many clamps". :)
This may sound like a silly question but I'm new to woodwork. Is it possible to glue together plywood panels to create a wider piece as you would do with regular wood?
Yes, but you will need dowel pins and lots of glue. Drill holes on each piece and glue in dowel pins. This wont be as strong as true sized plywood as the joint is the weak spot.
Exactly what Robert has suggested. The only other thing you can try if you are making it thicker as well is to offset the top and bottom layers form each other thus making ti wider and thicker at the same time.
Cheers Robert, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video. Honestly, If you have the clamps go for it... I do like the consistency of the screws but it can mess up the other side quite badly if you want to keep the untouched wood look. To me honest if I was going to paint a workbench / make a strong table that was going to be painted all over and I had the clamps I might even do a mixture of both.
Sometimes I wish desks could all be warped with a depression in the centre - normally when a tiny screw or roller has disappeared off the edge of a perfectly flat top into the carpet! As for clamping methods, the one way I have found that worked, was to use some spare very old Spur shelving system steel uprights, clamped at either side, one above, one below. Being a fairly heavy gauge c profile, they tend to stay straight. Somehow I doubt that the newer imitation ones are as sturdy. You can also use an extra sheet on top to protect the finished surface. Have used it when gluing corksheet onto plywood.
I feel the pain. Thankfully now I'm on hardwood floors. However, I don't know if it's a blessing or a pain as it can be really hard to find things on a wood grain floor 😅. I take it that with the spur system you can only fit in certain thicknesses right? I might be thinking of completely the wrong thing tho.
@@Keep-Making Using as many pairs of the double row hole uprights (I'll refer to them as steels) , with the flat faces onto the material, you end up with + ] l l [ + so a C clamp at each end of the steels capturing : steel, sheet, sheet, steel. For even greater compression, you can put more sets of clamped steels at right angles on top of the inner ones. Think of using a pair of 2x4s with clamps to squeeze something in between. I just find the steels more rigid. Hope I make sense now!
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just count on the really expensive plywood to be perfectly flat, and not come from the supplier with bows & twists? Lol…
Hey Rhythm Sinners, I would love to know your reasoning why it "Utterly wrong!" and how you would go about doing something like this without clamps or weights 😀
I used Titebond 3 (waterproof) glue on my boat gluing two-layers of 3/8 inch plywood together ... worked perfectly ... best glue I've ever used !!!
This is exactly what i needed - Laminating two plywood sheets to make a strong worktop without clamps. Great Idea there -
Cheers, I'm so glad I could help.
Thank you sir.. this was a proof of concept for me, buying a butcher block top is just too expensive
Thank you for sharing this. I bought some cheap 18mm birch ply sandwich boards from a wood recycling shop and didn’t realise they were bowed until I got home. I have a project that needs a 36mm sheet, and having holes doesn’t really matter, so I’m going to try this method to glue them together at home. Maybe I’ll make a video about it as part of the overall project!
I feel that using a combination of cauls & clamps plus several jugs of water, weights, bricks, etc would be quicker than screws. It saves you screws, time and additional frustration of repairing holes / blowouts.
I did this to create a huge workbench top. Great video
Thank you Dutch Shed Woodshop ! 😃
After watching some of your blender videos i decided to make a new desk and when i saw you in this vid too i was surprised lol XD
😅 Ya I've been doing blender videos for a bit too long that most of my channel is blender but It will self correct with a bit of time back to a maker channel
When I made my work table for the garage, instead of laminating entire sheets, I used scrap pieces of formwork plywood from work with the hard surface planed off. I cut the scrap pieces into 42mm strips about 1300mm long ( as it was reclaime wood, the pieces weren't uniform in length) and glued them together 3 at a time. When the glue had dried, I planed them again to get them square enough for the next step, glueing them together 3-4 at a time before finally glueing them to the final width of 840mm and squaring the ends to a final length of 1240mm. After sanding the surfaces, I gave the table top 4 coats of flooring laquer to get a strong smooth surface with a nice satin finish.
It was a heck of a lot of work, but it looks amazing, and only cost me some glue and a small can of laquer. :)
That sounds like come beautiful craftsmanship!
@@Keep-Making It certainly looks awesome, being able to see every single ply across the whole top, but man, what a monumental task for a weekend hobbyist like me!
And it was during the process that I came to the same conclusion as so many others before me: There is no such thing as "too many clamps". :)
YUP! Thus my predicament with this project.... I needed more clamps so I tried out this weird Idea
Came across this video as I am creating a top for work bench as well. Question, why not use braid nails to fix the pieces and just leave them in?
Wonder if you added hardwood edge band, if it would help it be even stiffer.
You could probably get away with using 30% of the screws used in this video. Glued and screwed is extremely strong.
2:30 Titebond 3 has a longer set time.
How much glue did you use? I'm gonna be gluing 2 sheets of 3/4 plywood together & using screws to clamp them together.
If I had to say an amount of glue I would guess 500ml but I really have no idea sorry.
I used about 20oz of Titebond 3 to laminate 2 sheets of 3/4 ply (6ft x 3ft4in)
This may sound like a silly question but I'm new to woodwork. Is it possible to glue together plywood panels to create a wider piece as you would do with regular wood?
Yes, but you will need dowel pins and lots of glue. Drill holes on each piece and glue in dowel pins. This wont be as strong as true sized plywood as the joint is the weak spot.
Exactly what Robert has suggested. The only other thing you can try if you are making it thicker as well is to offset the top and bottom layers form each other thus making ti wider and thicker at the same time.
Thanks for the video Jonathon. What are your thoughts about the use of clamping cauls vs screws for clamping the pieces together?--thanks
Cheers Robert, I'm so glad you enjoyed the video.
Honestly, If you have the clamps go for it... I do like the consistency of the screws but it can mess up the other side quite badly if you want to keep the untouched wood look. To me honest if I was going to paint a workbench / make a strong table that was going to be painted all over and I had the clamps I might even do a mixture of both.
@@Keep-Making Thanks for the reply Mark, be well
How many pieces could you glue together?
I love your homemade memes hahaha
HA! I'm glad you enjoyed it. You know me all original content when I can xD
This guy is a butcher. You need MAYBE 1/3 of the amount of screws to use this technique, also you avoid blowout BY USONG SHORTER SCREWS!?!
What type of glue do you use?
Tite bond 2 you'll see it at 1:09 into the video.
I hope that helps.
@@Keep-Making Ah- Thanks. I tried Liquid Nails and it flopped! (before i saw this!).
For strong desktops, did you consider using a butcher block tabletop?
I would have loved too but I don't have the clamps to make it... Plus no one sells it near me =/
@@Keep-Making ikea?
expensive? if you already have plywood
Sometimes I wish desks could all be warped with a depression in the centre - normally when a tiny screw or roller has disappeared off the edge of a perfectly flat top into the carpet!
As for clamping methods, the one way I have found that worked, was to use some spare very old Spur shelving system steel uprights, clamped at either side, one above, one below. Being a fairly heavy gauge c profile, they tend to stay straight. Somehow I doubt that the newer imitation ones are as sturdy. You can also use an extra sheet on top to protect the finished surface. Have used it when gluing corksheet onto plywood.
I feel the pain. Thankfully now I'm on hardwood floors. However, I don't know if it's a blessing or a pain as it can be really hard to find things on a wood grain floor 😅. I take it that with the spur system you can only fit in certain thicknesses right? I might be thinking of completely the wrong thing tho.
@@Keep-Making Using as many pairs of the double row hole uprights (I'll refer to them as steels) , with the flat faces onto the material, you end up with + ] l l [ + so a C clamp at each end of the steels capturing : steel, sheet, sheet, steel. For even greater compression, you can put more sets of clamped steels at right angles on top of the inner ones. Think of using a pair of 2x4s with clamps to squeeze something in between. I just find the steels more rigid. Hope I make sense now!
@@Reftravun I think I do.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just count on the really expensive plywood to be perfectly flat, and not come from the supplier with bows & twists? Lol…
MDF, should not even me made .. it's not good for anything! :(
Utterly wrong!
Hey Rhythm Sinners,
I would love to know your reasoning why it "Utterly wrong!" and how you would go about doing something like this without clamps or weights 😀