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A week ago, in a report from AWFS, our boss Kevin Ireland reported on a new instant adhesive, Nexabond 2500 Instant Wood Adhesive. It won an Innovation Award at AWFS and it’s worth a look. It’s made just down the road from us in Loveland, Ohio and the other day I had a chance to use it.
I’m working on a hanging tool cabinet for our December issue, and the cabinet has a lot of little drawers. That means there are a lot of little drawer dividers. For appearance sake, I don’t want end grain to show on the exposed edge of this 1/4″ thick, 2″ wide maple divider. So I needed to attach a small block to the end with the grain running at a right angle. Both parts are trapped in dados top and bottom so they really can’t go anywhere. I made a tongue and groove joint on the first one and decided that wasn’t worth the trouble. But I felt guilty about not attaching the two pieces somehow.
Nexabond is similar to other instant glues, it is a cyanoacrylate. But there is a major difference between this and other “super” or “crazy” glues; Nexabond is made without water or solvents. That change makes a big difference because the action of the adhesive is no longer dependent on humidity or temperature. It’s a thicker formulation and the manufacturer claims greater strength than most of the glues traditionally used for woodworking. More Information about the product is available from the company website.
I layed down a bead of the adhesive on the end grain of the vertical piece, put the cross-grain piece in place and pushed gently down for about 15 seconds. I walked away for a minute and wasn’t able to break the joint apart. Nexabond is too expensive to use for everything, and for most woodworking applications it may work too fast, but I think it’s a huge improvement over traditional instant glues. I plan on keeping a bottle handy for uses like this.
Nexabond is available directly from the manufacturer and will likely be available in the near future from other outlets.
