Expanding wood glue

[gasbusters]

Can anyone recommend an expanding wood glue for my loft stairs? I want to fill any gaps before we build the partition walls so we get no creaking later on

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Make them properly with well fitting wedges and you won't need expanding glue. Make them loose and the wedges will eventually move, regardless of the glue you use because foam isn't structural

 

[gasbusters]

Make them properly with well fitting wedges and you won't need expanding glue. Make them loose and the wedges will eventually move, regardless of the glue you use because foam isn't structural

Can you not get wood glue that expands slightly as it dries?

 

[EddieM]

Can you not get wood glue that expands slightly as it dries?

I guess you're thinking of polyurethane glue? Gorilla is well known make it so, bit as said isn't going to fix any inherent problems.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

When you build a flight of stairs the wedges are supposed to be hammered in tight (which tends to compress the fibres). In fact this is what you do on a dry run when you are building a kite winder in the workshop (because those are normally delivered to site dismantled then reassembled in situ). Glues which are water based will tend to swell the fibres of the housings and the wedges and if a cross linked glue is used it should set before the water had fully dissipated into the stringers. They often hsve the advantage of gaving long enough open times to allow complicated builds. TBH using expanding glue on a flight of stairs is courting disaster because if anything goes wrong during the assembly and cramping process and you lose time then the glue can set before you complete the assembly. That combined with the fact that expanding glues have a tendency to weep out of joints (which will ruin your stairs if you intend to apply either a stain or a clear finish afterwards) makes me consider their use in stair making to be a bit of a risky bodge

Back the wedges out one by one, clean out the housing, use a D3 or D4 PVA glue and hammer the wedge back in tight and leave to set.

 

[Diver Fred]

The hours I spent, before I became an apprentice, applying glue to the wedges used by the 'master' when making stairs. Following that moved onto gluing up the 'Glue Blocks'.
Once I became an apprentice I was 'promoted' to making tea and sweeping up... That worked well until I upset the workshop coddy and was fired. (he didn't approve of me sharpening drills, Told him I been taught by someone who had forgotten more about woodwork than he knew; May have got away with that except the workshop blokes who knew that person laughed and the site foreman agreed with me... Oops!)

 

[gasbusters]

Sorry i should have been clearer, the double winder stairs have already been fitted by a stair company, they seem solid, made from solid wood, they did creak on the first 2 days but thats settled down now so not creaking as the glue they used has dried. But i can see very small gaps along the joints so was thinking of putting expanding glue into those joints to maybe prevent possible problems in future.

Am i being unneccesarily over cautious?

 

[big-all]

as long as its not a gap between tread and riser where you can loose half the support to the tread youll be fine
foaming glue only works when assembling

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

caberfix. jewson

 

[catlad]

Lumber jacks another 5 min and 30 min