Solutions for Gluing on Edge Banding With Clamps

It's not uncommon for woodworking projects that we want to band the edges of sheet stock. And a couple of reasons for this, you might simply want to cover the unsightly edge of MDF or plywood, or in other cases you want to add solid wood as reinforcement to make sure something like a bookshelf, doesn't start to sag. I'm gonna show you a variety of ways to solve this problem. Clamping solutions are going to help you edge band a variety of materials and a variety of applications. Edge clamping problem number one, you want to put edge banding on a piece of sheet stock like this. So real common application for this would be, you're making European style cabinets which get banded, not a face frame, or this is a shelf, we want to cover up that man-made material. So here's the deal. The real key to this is we're doing a twofer. It's easiest if you do this two for one, and I'll show you why in just a sec. Now with our material, our edge banding material, an important part of this is that the material is wider, the edge band is wider than our sheet stock is thick. We want to do that so we have a little bit of overhang on each side, that'll get trimmed off later. Masking tape is a great trick here because we're a little bit wider, we want the same overhang on each side, put some pressure on that masking tape, pull it down. And then I'm gonna do the exact same thing to our second piece. Notice too the edge banding is still longer than our material, same thing, that'll get trimmed later. Now, what's nice about this is that when we close this, each piece acts like a call for the other piece, and does a great job of distributing the clamp pressure so that we get uniform closing all the way down the length of that edge band. And the reason this is great is cause the edge band is so thin, that if I just clamp it there, clamp it there, there might be spots in between where it's not drawn up tight to the sheet stock. So, by using the two pieces, like a call, like this, we get uniform clamping pressure on there, and benefit of economy of movement, we get two parts for the price of one clamping step. Parallel jaw clamps work great for this, let's move on to another edging solution. Another pretty common edge band application is to put on a piece like this and what we're looking for there in a lot of cases is adding rigidity to manmade materials. So imagine this is a bookshelf this long, if we just used the man-made, especially MDF like I have here, it's gonna sag over time. So, two things, we cover up that unsightly edge, and this makes the shelf a whole lot more rigid. We're gonna take a little bit different approach for this. So first step will be glue. And we're gonna use a different clamping strategy, we're gonna go with these three-way clamps in this application. So, material on, typically flush with one face. Then our three-way clamp can slide on. Now what's cool with these is that the lower part of the clamp squeezes onto our substrate, and what I'm doing is I manipulate the two pads here, as I'm watching here, to keep that pad centered over my edge band. Right about there, centered on the three quarter inch thickness of my stock. Then if I tighten those down, I can start to put pressure on with this and there, you can see how that closes up, check for flush. And then we'll just keep on keepin' on. All right last one, I'll just tighten, great squeeze out, now with that squeeze out, I just let that dry to a point where it's kind of rubbery, and then slice it off the surface with a chisel. So another great problem-solver here using these three-way clamps to get edge banding like this onto the front of a shelf or similar application. Another edge clamping application here. This one is way more robust, got inch and a half thick top, and a very significant nose we want to put on here. So this could be something like a bar top, because we've got such a large piece, we need a little bit more robust clamping solution. So first step is gonna be glue and then we'll go from there. All right now these clamps are cool because, like the three ways we just used, they're all in one, they're padded, so we don't have to worry about protecting our work. So what's nice here is that no matter how deep this countertop, or whatever it is we're working on is, doesn't matter, because we're only clamping out here on the edge, and really the tighter I make this screw on the front, the more those cams pull in. Okay, that's gonna hold there for me. Get a second one on here. So you don't have to worry about having a bar clamp or something that's long enough to span the whole top because of the way that we're grippin' on the edge. And like I said, more robust nosing, more robust clamp. That really lets me get a lot of pressure on there, in order to pull that in. So, another clamping solution for these heavier duty applications, like I've got here. Got one more really cool one to show you that involves curves. Curved surfaces like this are tricky because, yes I could get a bar clamp or something that would span this but, because the curve changes as it goes, it's really difficult to get that clamp to work, cause it's gonna want to keep creepin' on you. So I'll show you how I'm going to make this happen. First step is glue. Now it's gonna be a three-way deal again. But this time we're going to use a standard clamp, in combination with turning this into a three-way clap. I gotta put my standard clamp the other way, cause I want my overhang going down below. There we go. So I can watch the top and make sure it stays nice and flush. All right key is to get one on here, and just start with a little bit of pressure, just enough to kind of hold things in place. And I'm not worried right now about that being a little bit kittywampus cause we're gonna fix that. Isn't that cool, how that is able to draw that piece of solid right up against that curve. Then we can come this way, I'm gonna go ahead and straighten this guy out a little bit. Come up to flush. And there we go. It's amazing how they draw it into that curve like that. So a variety of edge banding applications that you might commonly use in your shop, a variety of approaches to make sure that edge banding draws up nice and tight, and we get it effectively clamped. All different approaches that you can put to work in your shop, so the next time you're edge banding, everything works out great.