My wood glue rarely leaves me hanging. But today was that day again. Before lunch, I cut a slat of a slatted frame in half and glued it together. The two banana shapes were facing each other like two parentheses “()”. This made it straight.

After 3-4 hours, I unclamped it and handplaned it to its final shape, so it can become the last rung of my “ladder” for the laundry shelf. Yeah, I’m still on that project over half a year later. You can call me a really lazy ass. ;-)

When I was about to round over the long edges with my handplane, the bananas suddenly came apart. Both ends still held, so I had some kind of an “O”. The glue had not fully set yet. It was still a tiny bit moist in the inside. I scraped off the leftovers with a chisel. To increase my odds the second time, I roughed up the surfaces with 40 grit sandpaper and a rasp, so that the glue has something to bite into. Didn’t do that the first time. I reckon that majorly contributed to the fail, because the boards were fairly smooth, maybe even coated with something, who knows. Any kind of finish is bad for glueing.

Now, I’m also using a few more clamps and let it sit over night. Well, two days in fact, since I cannot bang around tomorrow. Unfortunately, I can’t finish this frame/ladder today. But maybe on Monday.

Usually, I let wood glue set at least over night, even though a couple of hours should™ suffice I’m told. I will definitely go back to that regular setting period. Especially when mechanical forces are working against me and there is stress in the wood. Never can go wrong with a longer waiting time. I have always had good experience with this in the past. In fact, whenver the wood glue failed on me, it was either removing the clamps too early or a sloppy glueing surface preparation. Or both. ;-)