How to Make Edge Banding Flush

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One Response to “How to Make Edge Banding Flush”

1. Gary Coyne January 29th, 2015

   A number of years ago I made a sports equipment stand for my son. I purchased some red oak plywood from a big box home repair place and some red oak for edging. Knowing that removing the glue squeeze out was going to be a big issue (because of the paper thin veneer of red oak on the plywood), I wanted some mechanism to prevent the squeeze out from getting on the wood. This is where/when I started using masking tape to line both edges prior to any glue up. I laid the tape on the wood and then using a marking knife, I cut off the tape at the edge of wood giving me dead-on tape-to-edge surface. After glueing, I waited until the glue was mostly dry then peeled off the tape taking most of the squeeze out with the tape. I then used a block plain as your guest did to flatten the banding to the wood. By the way, do NOT use painter's blue tape. A friend of mine did that but if there is any tape caught between the plywood and the banding, you will see a faint blue line in the edge. Standard masking tape is mostly brownish and is thereby mostly invisible if any tape gets caught. While I do not use this all the time, any time where squeeze out could be an issue (either do to a veneer or the location of the glue up will be hard to clean up later), it's the technique I go to.

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