Altar Project: Squeezing Laminations

 

With the very next day being forecasted to be in the mid 70's followed by ten days in the 50's, I decided to make a go of it and laminate all my pieces together in a marathon of a day. Due to the awkward nature of the side panels, I don't have enough clamps or weights to apply the proper pressure for wood glue to bond properly. Wood glue also starts setting up in about 10 minutes meaning I would have to work very fast. Fortunately, technology has created products like the Thixo epoxy you see above with open times closer to an hour and although it needs some pressure to bond, it isn't as much as wood glue. However, it does need to have 55 F or above temperatures for 24 hours to fully cure.

With one day of warm weather forecasted, I came upon the solution. I opened the interior door between my kitchen and garage and set a fan blowing warmer house air into the garage to bring it quickly up to temperature. The day started out at 48 degrees F so it didn't have far to go. While it was heating up, I used that time to do some planning and layout work of how everything would go since I only had once chance to get it right. I laid three pieces that comprised the show face with the grain going in the proper orientation for  best look on my work bench nice face down and started squeezing out the epoxy. It is a two part epoxy with specially designed nozzles that mixes it together before it gets exposed at the end of the special tip. It is fairly expensive so I don't plan on using it everywhere unless I need the extra time. 

After getting the epoxy squeezed out, which took around 15 minutes per side panel, I then laid on the remaining three pieces that provide support and in the case of the double ogee arch side, provide nice looking backing surface and then screwed them every six inches in either direction, about 100 screws per side. This provides an even pressure over everything with out the need for clamps, especially ones that can reach out that far. I was able to get everything screwed in with maybe 20 minutes to spare before it started curing.

Above is the front panel assembly. You can see I marked the double ogee arch location on the back so I didn't inadvertently put a screw there and mess up the front backing face. The entire panel is a bit longer than needed which is why the far side has a couple pieces sticking our further than they should. After it cures, I will mark it and trim it exactly to size of the edges are nice and straight.

Since the back side panel doesn't have the double ogee arch detail, I could just screw down everything. It took me a bit longer to do since there was more drilling and putting in screws but I still had 10 minutes or so to spare. With both sides not laminated together into one large piece, I carried them inside where they will sit in my kitchen for the next 24 hours curing while I proceed on with making other pieces that will be applied to the carcass once it is together. For the rest of today however, I will take a well deserved break and not worry about the other things until tomorrow.