Gluing Plywood For Bowl Blanks

[Paul39]

I picked up a bunch of 7 ply 20mm plywood off the side of the road and want to glue up enough layers to make a 100mm - 150mm thick bowl blank.

Is it better to put 2 - 3 layers together at a time and then glue those together, or to do the whole stack at once?

Would it take longer to dry if I did a stack of 4 or 6?

I have some granite sink cut outs that I could use to clamp 2 or 3 together and keep them flat.

[Christos]

I have done a bowl out of LVL and treated this as normal wood. I did not have a smooth surface on the mating pieces and I allowed 24 hours before I used it.

I was sort of concern about voids but did not have any in the LVL board. Just to add contrast if I did not have enough I also added a hardwood piece in the blank.

[Old Croc]

Paul, you did not indicate what glue you are going to use. I did this once and used Titebond 2 glue and used a scissor jack from a car under my metal lathe bed for mass. Not sure if you have them over there, but don't use a hydraulic one as they can leak down.
Rgds,
Crocy.

[hughie]

Being a bit impatient at times. I glued my stack all at once with a bunch of G clamps around the outside. Wasnt real fancy plywood so it had voids in the layers, other than that it worked fine using PVA I left it for about a week.

[hughie]

Being a bit impatient at times. I glued my stack all at once with a bunch of G clamps around the outside. Wasnt real fancy plywood so it had voids in the layers, other than that it worked fine using PVA I left it for about a week.

In hind sight it would have better to use high quality plywood, not construction plywood as I did at the time.

[Paul39]

In hind sight it would have better to use high quality plywood, not construction plywood as I did at the time.


What I have is better than construction but not as good as Baltic Birch. I'll have a go to see how it works.

Thanks to all who commented.