5 Wood Gluing Techniques: How to Use Wood Glue Effectively for Your Projects

Does using wood glue for your projects intimidate you? Follow these wood gluing techniques to make gluing wood together easier.

Wood is a great material to work with as most wood species are easy to glue. Wood is porous and glue can grab onto it.

In fact in some strength tests, the glue held and it was the wood fibres that broke and caused the joint to fail.

However beginners usually find using wood glue to be stressful and difficult. Glue sets up quickly and if you are not prepared, will dry before you have a chance to put the two pieces of wood together.

Clamping also seems to be a worry – do I have enough clamps? 

And having glue squeezing out everywhere is messy and can make you lose it as you try and clean up before the glue dries.

Let’s look at five wood gluing tips, so that you can actually enjoy gluing wood together.

Best Glue for Wood

There are many glues on the market. And then there is a subset of all the glues especially for woodworkers. So many that it’s hard to know what glue to use.

For the beginner I suggest keeping it simple.

Wood glue is readily available, easy to work with and cleans up with water while wet. There are different formulations depending on where the glue is used and how much working time you need. 

Titebond III is the most popular with most woodworkers and is food safe, important if you are gluing up wood for a bowl turning or a cutting board. Or if building toys and furniture for your kids. It also has a longer working-time glue so that you don’t have to rush gluing wood together.

The other recommendation is to also have a bottle of gel-type cyanoacrylate adhesive (CA) glue (more commonly known as super glue or crazy glue) on hand. This comes in handy for trickier glue joints which you might not be able to clamp easily. You can add a few dabs of CA between the wood glue to have it temporarily grab until the wood glue has a chance to set.