Glue starved joints, and "softener"

Hi guys. On bottles of glue I often read that the clamping pressure shouldn't be too great, as to avoid glue starved joints. Easy to understand the concept, but has anyone experienced this? Ie a bookmatched top coming apart or something. I find it hard not to press quite hard when I glue tops and backs, what I learned in school as a young lad was to screw clamps 'til your palms hurt...

And another thing. I read stuff about a product called SuperSoft or something that's supposed to soften wood. Used for preparing veneer when making furniture I gather, but some guy also wrote about using it on wood for a uke. On the company's homepage it sez something like "will not stain wood like home made softeners might" and that got me wondering. Anyone ever heard of home made softener?

I'm finally getting the hang of bending on the pipe and I'm allright at bending with the heat blankets (got one custom made to my preferred size!), so I'm just curious about this.

All the best / Sven

Sven,

I've starved joints by overclamping before. The natural logic is to clamp the hell out of a joint, thinking that you'll get a tighter bond. Ideally, you want to have a very thin layer of glue, between two wood surfaces. Bar clamps are good all purpose fasteners, opposed to "c" clamps, which can become very tight with minimal effort. Bookmatching, specifically, requires less pressure than you think, provided that the gluing surface is jointed properly. We all have different ways of book matching, so find something that works for you, but you don't have to clamp the bejeezus out of it. Firm, but not exceedingly tight. Most wood glues have a small amount of vacuum as they cure, sucking the two pieces together. If the right amount of glue and sufficient pressure are applied, you'll have a good joint.

I got some veneer softener from Chuck and it works great. I continue to use water for most of my pipe bending, but I break out the softener when I don't want to crack extremely figured sides and hard to bend bindings. No problems with gluing and it works almost instantly. I don't know about home brew softeners.

The Super Soft II that paul is referring to is available on the Internet and some people find it helpful in bending sides. It's primary ingredient is glycerin which is what a lot of the "home brews" are formulated around. I've heard of people simply adding a squirt of glycerin to their soak water.

Thanks guys. These questions have been haunting me for a couple of months and I will be able to sleep again.

As for book matching, I use a set up with string and wedges. I saw a pic of it somewhere, made a similar one and I really like it. Saw another simple metod in a guitar builder's book, but that jig was bigger and mine collapses into really small pieces when I'm done. That's worth a lot when you're in an appartment... here it is (if link works):



All the best / Sven