# Glue for melamine chipboard



## fobos8 (5 Apr 2006)

Hi Everyone

I'm new to cabinet making - there's a lot I don't know..... Like what glue to use when making a biscuited butt joint using melamine chipboard. 

I've tried using regular wood glue. The bisuits get glued okay but not where the chipboard meets the melamine.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Something that will set in about 10mins would be great as it would give me time to clamp and check for square.

Cheers, Andrew


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## DaveL (5 Apr 2006)

Hi Andrew, 

Welcome to the forum.  

I have never tried to glue melamine chipboard, so I am no help for your problem, but I sure someone will be along with an answer for you. :-s


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## engineer one (6 Apr 2006)

i was going to ask a similar question, having watched a couple of norm programmes today where he made bits for his garage workshop, he cuts a lot of dados in the boards then biscuits and sometimes even nails.

wonder why he and so many american magazine articles use dado so
much on plainboxes,

i have to say that i think with mfc you need to remove the facing where you are aiming to biscuit otherwise you will get no glue up strength, not sure the facing is strong enough in shear strength to allow for gluing. if you check out all store bought mfc wardrobes and cabinets, they are screwed together, the biscuits or other fixings only locate. so maybe that is the idea buscuit and then screw.

hope this helps although i am sure that others have better ideas.

paul :wink:


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## George_N (6 Apr 2006)

Wave a look at the Woodshop Demos website. They demonstrate cutting panels for "Euro" style kitchen cabinets from MFC using Festool kit. The cabinets are then assembled using carcass screws and no glue at all. That's ok for most kitchen cabinets where the end panels don't show. Where they do, you either use the little screw head covers or attach some kind of decorative end panel or laminate. Lots of people will say biscuits and glue or screws and glue but the screws only method works ok for cabinets that will be rigidly fixed in place, like kitchen units.

cheers

George


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## fobos8 (6 Apr 2006)

Thanks George for your advice.

For the people who do use glue - do you know which brand of glue they use?

Cheers, Andrew


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## johnjin (6 Apr 2006)

Hi Andrew

Welcome to the forum
As far as I am concerned I use Evo-Stik on melamine and it seems to do a pretty good job. It also sticks pretty good to the chipboard. I believe that that is what the melamine is stuck on with in the first place.
Hope this helps a bit.

All the best

John


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## jasonB (6 Apr 2006)

Whenever I make up MFC carcases I just glue the biscuits and don't bother with the exposed "grain" to Melamine surface. I tend to use titebond II. Scrit is the glue/MFC man, think he uses a cross linking PVA(D3) hopefully he will post a reply.

Jason


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## Scrit (6 Apr 2006)

Thanks Jason.....

Hope I don't upset anyone, but here's a few replies....



engineer one":5gmg4ung said:


> Wonder why he and so many American magazine articles use dado so much on plainboxes?


I think it is because the Americans have been a lot slower on the (manufacturing) uptake of MFC and MDF and still use a lot of plywood. American homes are still predominently timber frame, so their forest products sector is a lot larger than ours in Europe. Things are changing gradually, though. Notice that he (Norm) doesn't dado MDF or MFC very often, if ever - a dado head would probably rip MFC to pieces and chip all the edges, too  



engineer one":5gmg4ung said:


> I have to say that I think with MFC you need to remove the facing where you are aiming to biscuit otherwise you will get no glue up strength, not sure the facing is strong enough in shear strength to allow for gluing. If you check out all store bought MFC wardrobes and cabinets, they are screwed together, the biscuits or other fixings only locate. So maybe that is the idea biscuit and then screw.


Shop-bought furniture is either flat pack (mainly cam and dowel) or dowelled and glued construction because of the production equipment used to manufacture it. Line borers came in in the early 1970s to be followed by PTPs (point-to-point borers) then finally a European speciality called the PTP router, a cross between a CNC router and a PTP borer. All this equipment excels in gang boring vertical and horizontal holes on 32mm (or multiples thereof) centres. The resulting components can be put together very quickly and accurately by relatively unskilled staff. Biscuits require a greater skill level to use ad so have been taken up by small shops in the main.

The best quality MFC kitchen carcasses _are_ actually dowelled and glued, but extra strength and rigidity can be achieved by inserting a tight-fitting back into a groove and adding a few spots of glue and by adding cross braces at the rear of the carcass top, bottom and if necessary in the middle. The glue should be a good quality D3 (exterior grade) PVA (as noted by Jason). I buy mine from a company called Strongbond in Bury, but they only really do trade quantities I'm afraid. I've had success in the past with EvoStick blue (exterior grade, D3)

One thing you sometimes have to watch with biscuits is that they are a good fit in the slot. Oversize slots or undersize biscuits can seriously weaken the carcass.



johnjin":5gmg4ung said:


> As far as I am concerned I use Evo-Stik on melamine and it seems to do a pretty good job. It also sticks pretty good to the chipboard. I believe that that is what the melamine is stuck on with in the first place.


Actually the melamine facing is generally bonded onto the core with something like a melamine or phenol resin, not a contact adhesive. I'd avoid contact adhesives like the plague for construction joints - the glue joints always creep and have little strength. They work well for laminating Formica onto chipboard in situations where the surface will be subjected to no shear forces (e.g. horizontal work surfaces), but I cannot think of many other areas where they do work.

As George says carcass screws work pretty well, although personally I'd add a bead of PU glue to the joint, the type sold in 300ml tubes and dispensed using a mastic or "skeleton" gun, to beef up the joint. Makes it more waterproof, too, which for a kitchen or bathroom is a must.

Scrit


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## fobos8 (7 Apr 2006)

Thanks for all your input.

For what its worth I asked technical at EvoStick what the best glue for melamine is. 

They said that its very difficult to bond and that its best to glue wood to wood where possible. 

Bearing that in mind I reckon I'll try dados reinforced with glue and carcass screws.

Cheers, Andrew


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## johnelliott (7 Apr 2006)

Might be worth trying some PU glue. I got some from Axminster, comes in a tube so you need a mastic gun but you would anyway as the stuff is very thick. Sets hard enough to unclamp in about 5 minutes, quicker if you dampen the surfaces.
With MFC the biscuits would just be for location while the PU glue sets. With any material/glue combination the answer is to try it and then test the joint afterwards. If it fails somewhere other than the glue bond line then you are on to a winner
John


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## Scrit (7 Apr 2006)

fobos8":1bkrnhvu said:


> Bearing that in mind I reckon I'll try dados reinforced with glue and carcass screws.


Just a couple of questions for you to ponder: how do you intend to edge band this stuff? Then how do you intend to cut a rebate through the edge banding without it chipping out? 



johnelliott":1bkrnhvu said:


> With MFC the biscuits would just be for location while the PU glue sets.


But then you're missing the point of using biscuits, that the moisture from the glue causes the biscuit to swell and "lock" the joint. Leave out the PVA glue on the biscuits and you have a PU only joint which will probably have inferior shear strength as its "grip" on the melamine facing will not be that brilliant. 

I've played around with PU in conjunction with biscuits/PVA in the past and there is little difference in strength between that and using only the PVA with biscuits. They're also a pain to assemble. The key to strength and rigidity in carcasses is to use a tight fitting back and braces. That way you will ensure that the carcass is kept square at all times and the shear strength of the joints becomes less of an issue. In other words I design out some of the strength issues by increasing the glue line area and therefore the rigidity of the product.

Scrit


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## fobos8 (10 Apr 2006)

Hi Scrit 

Yeah your right about the edge banding splitting with dados. In the end I've just joined the boards using bisuits and blue Evostick. Works okay - tested the strength and their pretty difficult to destroy. Have put a very tight fitting back board in and everything seems fine.

Thanks for your help

Cheers, Andrew


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