When you need to stick two wooden surfaces together with the strongest possible bond, this is the glue you should choose.
Nails, screws, and other fasteners all have their place in the woodshop, but nothing holds pieces together quite so seamlessly as glue. Not only is wood glue cheap and easy to work with, but when properly adhered and set with adequate pressure, the bond between two glued pieces can actually be stronger than the wood itself. So it’s no surprise that many carpenters consider it to be a woodworking staple that’s worth investing in.
That said, there are a lot of different kinds of glue out there, and not all of them have this kind of bonding strength. Cyanoacrylate adhesives such as Super Glue are useful for quick, supplementary bonds (side note: they’re also great for fixing a cracked windshield.) These are usually thin, so they generally aren’t great for filling gaps and only create surface-level bonds that don’t have a ton of holding power, but they dry quickly and can often be used to attach small decorative pieces or hold pieces together long enough for you to attach other fasteners or wait for stronger adhesives to cure. Epoxy resin can be useful when attaching non-wooden components like metal or plastic to wood, but it can be brittle. Liquid plastic weld can powerfully attach small pieces, and contact cement is great for applying veneer. But which type of glue is the strongest when it comes to bonding two types of wood together?The trouble with choosing the strongest wood glue
There are a few caveats to choosing the strongest wood glue. The first is that «wood» isn’t a uniform substance. The density of the grain and the smoothness of the surface can vary across different species and even across different boards composed of the same type of wood. Different adhesives will be able to form bonds of varying strength depending on the texture, grain, and available surface area of the wood, as well as certain environmental factors like humidity and temperature.
The second is that «strength» isn’t always best measured in pure holding power. If you want to get really technical, Delo Monopox is widely touted as the strongest adhesive in the world. The company that manufactures it famously used just 3 grams of the adhesive to lift a 16.3-ton truck in 2013 — and it can be used on wood. That said, it isn’t marketed as a «wood glue», and the vast majority of people wouldn’t use it that way. Likewise, other epoxies technically have a higher bonding strength than glues that are marketed as wood glues, but the cured resin can be brittle along longer joints and will break before it bends, making it effectively weaker in certain use cases.
