Thread: Brands of PVA/crosslinking glues for cold climates?

Hi Curly
Welcome to the forum. I think most say to be used above 10C. I often wait till later in the day or put some sort of heating into my workshop when glueing up or appling finish. I recently did some basic glue tests which I did at a max temp of 17C. After 48hrs I broke the joint and had 100% good glue tearout (the timber failed not the glue) with Aquadhere ext and several others. Good luck

These are the specs from the titebond web site, there seems to be a few that are for use below 10 degrees.

Ciao,

M.

Product Specifications

Hi Curlywood,

I use AV 180 which is outrageously expensive or 303 which is reasonably priced quite successfully in conditions like you describe for my work down here in Tassie. I don't use two pack epoxy in those conditions however. Don't be in a hurry to take the job out of cramps: leave for 36 hours.

Store the glue container under your pillow or some other convenient place where it is a bit warmer than the workshop. warm the surface of the job cautiously with a heat gun prior to gluing up. Once glue curing can be stimulated to commence it then seems to go forward quite successfully in my experience. I've never had a glue failure that I'd put down to suboptimal temp. conditions but then I've had very very few glue failures over 30 years. I believe that gluing up as soon as practically possible after preparing the materials is fundamental to success. I'm talking of not more than an hour and possibly less with very dense timbers with high acidity characteristics. Don't get stuck on it!!

Old Pete

I am gluing up a piece at the moment here in Canberra where the temp is a max of 8 degrees. In my shed (side of the garage) I have a workshop light, one of those stands with two 500w lights on them for about $35 at the hardware store. I don't really need them for the light but the heat they provide is quite useful. Still, after about 4 hours in the shed today, I had to bring the piece into the house as the titebond original just wasn't going off.

I'm only about 20 mins west of you curly and so have the same problems. The worst one was when the glue 'chalked up' in the cold. Of all the PVA glues around at a reasonable price the Selleys seem to be the best quality, but you need to do your glue-ups around midmorning if you are going to leave them in the shed, either that or take the job into the house. SWMBO allows that on occasion! Come on summer.

Thank you to all of you for your helpful hints.

If you live where it is cold.....make sure you store you glue some where relativly warm too.....ALL PVA glues and most water bassed glues suffer badly if they get close to freezing.

PVA can be permanently runined if it gets frosted.......get onto the manufacturers information sheets and thath should tell you the whole story,


There relay is no getting arround it, almost every glue of finish will have problems in low temperatures.....even epoxies.

cheers

The one glue that does set quicker in the cold is hot melt glue gun glue. The only pity is that most of the stuff you can get yout hands on is complete rubbish designed to make dried flower arrangeing easy. Very handy for temporary joining of course because it is so easy to break apart and remove.

Edit: Postscript: Just had a browse on the old internet- turns out I had forgotted about the old fassioned hide glues of our fathers' day, or perhaps grandfathers' day if you are a bit younger (I feel so ashamed). There are also a few sites that will ship industrial quantities of more advanced hot melt glues and systems to go with them.

I did have the opposite problem with fizzy polyurethane glue here in summer as it requires water in the atmosphere to cure and it was about 40 degrees celsius and 0.001% relative humidity. It is not quite as strong as the old PVAs though (depending on the application of course).