Thread: Joining Advice Needed

Looks like the termites have had first use!
Biscuits are faster!

They have, but that is how I wanted it - it's completely dry and I have treated it.

I intend to make this: Glow table

You sure that's oregon? Looks like some sort of hardwood to me. I any case you don't need biscuits or dowels, a simple butt joint will work just as well and be just as strong on the long grain. Having said that, it may be hard to achieve given the termite damage in that wood. Just use what you've got and what you know, you can't go too wrong with either of those methods. The only consideration is if you want to cut the piece to length after gluing you need to know where your biscuits are so that they aren't visible in the cut, same goes with dowels to a lesser degree.

Good luck.

Personally I would just try gluing without going the dowel or biscuit route. Depending on your arrangement of the boards you could use epoxy for the initial glue up. Then use the same epoxy tinted with the glow powder to fill the voids. One thing to consider is along the glue line of the boards, hack out some of the wood to make a void and fill this with the epoxy.

If you go the epoxy route you might want to consider doing a test as the article mentions clear resin was used as the filler.

How thick are your boards? If thin then a biscuit may be better, if thicker then hardwood dowels would be stronger. However, I agree with Lplates and Christos that you may not need either if you have good solid wood and straight matching surfaces at the joins. The dodgier the joins the more important are the assistance of dowels or biscuits. Any good quality adhesive will get you very strong joins on long, straight, exactly matching edges. PVA (Titebond III is water resistant and has a long open time so you can take your time with glue-up, but not gap filling) or epoxy - one like Bote-Cote's Epox-E glue is strong and gap filling as well as being able to be pigmented with colouring to get a less visible join.

I also agree with Lplates that the timber looks like a hardwood not Oregon. Oregon is a northern hemisphere conifer with very distinct banding of different densities in the timber - soft and lighter coloured "early wood" formed over Spring and Summer and harder and darker coloured "latewood" formed over Autumn and early winter before growth ceases for the year. Oregon doe not have any pores in the wood (conifers don't have pores).

I agree that planing a nice, smooth, mating surface and just clamping with glue is probably more than adequate.