Backyard Birds – Part 17

When I finished the marquetry for the cabinet door, I prepared a substrate, the solid surface that I would glue the marquetry on.

The main substrate that I use is medium density fiberboard (MDF). My friend Tony, who visits the shop on Wednesdays, helped me cut a piece of MDF on the table saw. Tony loves trains, trucks, and cats, so when I asked him to label the MDF, he added some decorations.

Since the marquetry would go all the way out to the edges of the door, as well as the frame around the door, I needed to add some solid wood to the sides of the MDF. That way, when the door was open, the viewer would see nice solid wood instead of fiberboard.

I drew a diagram so that I could keep track of how big the pieces of solid wood needed to be.

All of the padauk from my original board was going to be used for other parts of the cabinet, so I needed to use wood from a different board. However, since the sides of the door would only be visible when the door was open, it was okay if the wood wasn’t a perfect match.

There was a small board of padauk lying around the shop that was the right size for what I needed.

Gluing the padauk strips to the MDF was no problem. But I also needed to glue an extra piece of padauk to the bottom of the door, because in my design, the vase of sunflowers would extend down below the rest of the door.

I glued the extra piece of padauk onto the strip of wood at the bottom of the door and left it in clamps for a little over an hour. Usually, that would be enough time for the wood glue to set. However, when I took off the clamps. the piece of padauk fell off.

I assumed that I had done something wrong, even though I’ve glued hundreds of pieces of wood together in exactly this manner. I consulted with my dad, who has probably glued tens of thousands of pieces of wood together. He couldn’t figure out what could have gone wrong, but he watched me re-glue and re-clamp the small piece of padauk and confirmed that it looked fine. I waited an hour and a half for the glue to dry, which should be plenty of time to ensure that a glue joint is secure enough to stay put without any significant stress applied to it. However, the padauk fell off again as soon as I removed the clamps.

On my third try, I left the glue to set overnight. In the morning, it was affixed securely. So for the rest of the project, I made sure to wait an extra long time for the glue to set if I was gluing padauk-to-padauk.