Glue Up Or Finishing - Which Can Make You Break Into A Sweat ?

I seldom have trouble with glue ups. My finishing pucker factor increses with the price of the lumber and what my wife wants.

-- Jerry

One way is to finish first and then the glue doesn’t adhere
to your work.

Depends on how big the project is. Glue up can be a pain if it’s big and hard to handle. Finishing almost always makes me sweat and say bad words in my head lol. I’m actually starting to fall in love with wipe on poly. It’s really easy to apply, dries fast, and is hard to mess up. It leaves a great finish too, nice and smooth:) I just got the harbor freight spray finisher, like the one rockler sells. I’m still practicing with it though. Haven’t got the hang of it enough to use on a nice project yet.

Glue ups are not hard for me. Finishing is my bugaboo, mostly prep sanding. I spray almost everything, either through a gun, or on small projects, rattle can. Probably a leftover from my refinishing shop days. I do wipe on Tru-oil, forgot about that.
I also use the HF guns, and have recently fallen in love with their HVLP cheapo unit you can get with a coupon fort $9.99. The purple one. Beats the pants off the Kobalt equivalent for $32. And if somehow I screw up the HF unit, I am only out 10 bucks, but so far it has repeatedly worked very nicely. At 40PSI, thing is a dream. I even bought a spare, but have yet to use it.

-- Tsunami Guitars and Custom Woodworking, Cleveland, TN

Everyone has it right: I just had this dilemma the other day with this 3 in 1 bed. I thought about finish, then glue up and assemble, until I opened my eyes to see the stacks of a ga-zillion parts. I’ll do a little o both actually. Guess there’s a time n place for either, and both.

-- Roger from KY. Work/Play/Travel Safe. Keep your dust collector fed. Kentuk55@yahoo.com