Gluing Puzzle Joints

On your flat table, dry assemble a table full of puzzle jointed parts with the labels/marks up. Make sure that the puzzles fit well and the panels lay very flat.

Once they are dry assembled, place wax paper under the joints to keep the panels from sticking to your table. Use a squeegee to force epoxy into the joint, wait a few minutes and then sweep more epoxy into the joint. Then use the squeegee to wipe up any excess epoxy on the surface of the panels to save sanding time later on.

Take care to align the panels without putting sideways pressure on the joints which would miss align the panels- the panels should want to align to make perfectly fair edges. Site down them and adjust until the panel joint looks fair and doesn’t have a kink in it at the puzzle joint. Squeegee off any excess and then place wax paper over the joints. Place scrap pieces of Plywood or Particle board on top of the wax paper and tap with a hammer to make sure they are laying as flat as possible. Then place a weight on top to press the joints flat.
p(banner important). MAKE SURE THE JOINT IS SITTING PERFECTLY FLAT. Any misalignment can cause issues in the next steps.

Alternative Method

It is possible to speed up this process by using CA glue which is a type of runny super glue used by high end wood workers.

It is even more important to make sure the joint is fitting together well and the adjacent panels are laying perfectly flat on the table. This stuff works instantly and thus you will quickly be locking these parts together for good. Also, you will need to make sure your flat table is either well waxed or has some wax paper under the panels when you do this. Once you are sure that everything looks exactly how you want it, dribble a small amount of CA glue along the entire joint. You can spray some of the CA glue accelerator on if you like or just wait a couple extra minutes. The goal is to glue these pieces together well enough that the joints do not shift while you are laminating over them in subsequent steps.

Once the glue (either epoxy or CA glue) has setup, use a hard sanding block with some 100 grit sand paper to sand the joint flat so it will be easier to laminate over.

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