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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

A little surprised to see that the recommendation for wood to wood isn't the ubiquitous Titebond line of wood glues. I've never seen a bottle of Elmer's carpenter's glue in any shop I've ever set foot in.

There are other adhesives used to glue wood together depending on the application (epoxy is big in the boat world AIUI), but for everyday wood gluing, Titebond is pretty much king in the US.

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From a brand popularity and professional use point of view, you are 100% correct. The various Titebond formulations are, I believe, the most widely used by carpenters in the US. However, all PVA glues are going to have extremely similar strength and overall properties, and they do have an excellent summary here:

https://www.thistothat.com/glue/pva.shtml

"Be wary of over priced PVAs that claim to be for a specific use. There is very little difference from one PVA to the other, and nothing that should increase the cost."

Titebond does have range of products, well described here:

https://thewoodwhisperer.com/articles/differences-between-ti...

but Titebond original would be considered to be nearly identical to the Elmers that they recommend

I use Elmer's normal white glue all the time for wood. It has a MUCH longer open time (I am not fast), and is still as strong or stronger than the wood.

My home-made bench made of southern yellow pine boards ripped and laminated is exclusively that and will outlive me, and my son if he decides to not throw it out.

NB: I also use Titebond, but not because it's better at holding, just cures/dries quicker. And is better for wet/damp applications.

Titebond III creates bonds stronger than the hardest woods I use and they’re even highly water resistant. It’s also easy to apply, clean, store, etc.

Maybe Elmer’s is good but in 15+ years of gluing wood, I’ve never seen it recommended or used, either.

Elmer's got high scores on Project Farm(and their testing methodology is, to a layman's understanding, reasonably structured). But their actual conclusion in that video was that if you were testing most of these glues at their limit, the wood would fail first.

I love project farm. That’s good to know, I’ll have to look that one up.

This makes sense too, considering the type of glue will be chemically very similar across brands. If the bonds are stronger than wood, then the only qualities worth comparing would be unrelated to strength.

I suppose set time, ease of storage, ease of application, etc will remain almost identical across brands as well. But maybe not?

I’ll have to watch that project farm. He’s a knowledgeable guy so I imagine I’ll come away from it a little better educated.

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