When you&#;re choosing your residence hall furniture and deciding on the specs, you&#;ll inevitably choose what materials you want.
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Should it be totally solid wood, including the top? Or should you get solid wood or plywood substrates with laminate tops, or all laminate?
Whatever the selection, your furniture is probably going to include edge banding. Why?
Because it&#;s an important part of the construction. And depending on where we use it in the cabinet, it improves the longevity of your furniture.
In this short guide&#;part of our Nuts & Bolts Series for operational and facilities leaders&#;you&#;ll learn some of the basics of edge banding.
So let&#;s start at the beginning. What is edge banding?
It&#;s actually kind of simple, and the video below will help you understand it even better, but this is a simple overview to get you started.
Here&#;s the basic non-technical idea.
Plywood, particle board, and other manufactured wood cores like MDF have rough, unfinished, unprotected, and generally unsightly edges.
To account for that, some clever folks developed technologies that allow you to glue different bands of glossy finished material to those rough edges to match the tops and sides.
Those narrow bands or strips are called edging tape, and they range in thickness from 0.018-inch to 5mm thick and come in 250 ft rolls.
The thicker edging is used in high traffic and commercial environments because it provides greater resilience and impact resistance. For example, the military requires a thicker &#;&#; solid wood edge banding for maximum impact resistance.
And edge banders are the industrial grade machines that apply the edging tape to the raw edges of the wood panels with a hot-melt adhesive or glue.
Edge banding serves both functional and aesthetic purposes.
Functionally, edge bands perform some key duties for your furniture. First, they keeps moisture out serving as de facto seals on the edge of the core material. Second, edge banding improves durability and resilience by providing impact resistance. If you&#;re using solid wood edging, it can also add to the overall strength of the furniture.
Aesthetically, edge banding covers up unsightly rough edges and creates a glossy finish to match your tops and sides. You can also create radial edges to soften sharp angles.
Where can you expect to find edge banding in your furniture? That depends on your overall material specification.
A solid wood product won&#;t include any edge banding, except where we can&#;t use solid wood. Wardrobe doors, for example, are made of veneer core plywood or MDF.
And even when we use solid wood for case sides and drawer fronts, many customers still use high pressure laminate tops. Those tops need edge banding.
If you&#;re using plywood or laminate as your material specification, that needs edge banding too.
DCI uses edge banding in places you might not expect, like plywood bed decks. Why? Because a fully sealed deck prevents bed bugs. You can read more about bed bug mitigation here.
DCI doesn&#;t use edge banding on cabinet backs or drawer bottoms because they are already embedded (sealed) in dato grooves. Likewise we don&#;t edge band internal plywood drawer parts because it doesn&#;t add value.
You should note that some manufactures don&#;t use edge banding where they should&#;like on the bottom and back edges of plywood cabinets. That&#;s a problem because moisture, even small amounts, can destroy unsealed furniture.
What are the edging tapes made from? There are different materials, and we&#;ll just focus on a few here.
1. PVC is the most popular material for edge banding on case good tops. Pros: It&#;s inexpensive, durable, and boasts a long life. It doesn&#;t require any finishing process. It&#;s also easy, albeit tedious, to repair. Cons: You can&#;t recycle it. It doesn&#;t biodegrade. Once it&#;s blemished, you can&#;t refinish it. (NB: ABS&#;Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene&#;is an eco-friendly alternative to PVC because it&#;s both recyclable and safe to incinerate.)
When it comes to PVC, we recommend 3mm edging in general because it goes on cleaner, quicker, and with better adhesion. Another advantage is that you get a graceful radius and a nice soft-looking finish. In general, we avoid .5mm edging because the corners tend to be too sharp.
2. Solid Wood is still a favorite for case good tops in many woodworking camps. It&#;s durable, recyclable, easy to fix and refinish, strong, stiff, and economical.
Benefits: it&#;s more resistant to chipping than veneer edge tape. Solid wood glues are more reliable and less prone to peeling than veneer and PVC. It provides additional dimensional support to plywood and mdf. Climate neutral manufacturing. Cons: Difficult to use for curves.
We offer solid wood edge banding for tops in a range of thicknesses. And you can apply it internally or externally.
When it comes to solid wood we recommend 9.5mm on case good tops.
As we explain below, at DCI, we believe the best way to apply wood edge banding is &#;internally&#; with a HPL top. Why? Because in our experience, it&#;s incredibly durable and never requires additional service.
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3. Wood Veneer is the most common edge banding material for plywood cabinet sides, drawer fronts, and MDF wardrobe doors. It&#;s made from thin slices of wood&#;typically oak, maple, ash, walnut, birch, and mahogany&#;that are joined together in a roll using finger jointing.
It usually features a heat-sensitive glue backing. And it comes in a range of thicknesses, so it&#;s important to use the right one depending on the application.
Pros: It&#;s attractive, durable, and strong. It provides a clean solid-wood look, and it&#;s pre-sanded to absorb stains and finishes and seamlessly match your wood. Cons: It&#;s not heat resistant. Avoid putting it near a heater. It doesn&#;t do well in high-use environments.
According to RA Learning Center, there are at least four methods of applying edge banding. There are a lot of things to say about each of these but for now, here&#;s a simple list of application methods and mediums.
There&#;s no doubt, edge banding is essential to most campus and dorm furniture. When applied improperly, or used incorrectly in critical components, it&#;s a huge maintenance issue.
One issue you might find in furniture that has edge banding is that it peels. Why?
Sometimes, for different reasons, the adhesive can fail. When that happens, the edge banding will start to peel away from the edge.
Peeling can also happen because of rough use. For example, .5mm edging doesn&#;t provide much resistance to impact. Therefore you don&#;t want to use it on the front end of a case side. If you do, your edging might start to peel.
If your furniture starts to peel, we can fix it. Just reach out to your local DCI account rep, and we&#;ll take care of it for you.
Generally speaking, we recommend PVC edge banding for projects where budget is the first and driving priority. That is not to say there is anything wrong with this material. There are just fewer steps in the manufacturing process and the raw material is less expensive.
Solid wood edge banding is more expensive because it&#;s labor intensive and the material is higher quality. And with more steps involved in the manufacturing process, we consider this a premium solution. As we alluded to above, internal solid wood edge banding with HPL tops are probably our strongest and most durable solution.
We choose to use a hot melt glue for our adhesive solution because it&#;s user friendly and provides a great seal. We apply the glue to the edge while it&#;s still hot and then apply the banding, pressing it to the side.
Ambient temperature plays an important role in the edge banding process. We need to regulate the temperature of both the building and our materials. In essence, we need a warm environment for the optimal adhesion process. It can&#;t be cold in the building.
And finally, you need a good clean glue edge for the process to work. At DCI, we have state of the art machinery that improves the glue edge and squares it up perfectly.
It&#;s our responsibility to edge band correctly. But you should know, there are still choices you&#;ll need to make when evaluating edge banding options.
Those choices can feel daunting if you don&#;t live and breathe this stuff like we do. Our experts will help you navigate your edge banding options to ensure you get the right product for your project.
Our goal is to help you understand the process and give you confidence that our products are designed based on years of manufacturing experience and time-tested performance in the field.
Here is a stripped down version of edge banding. Of course, when building furniture for Higher Education and Military customers, we do this on an industrial scale. But this video will help you visualize the process in its simplest form.
If you enjoyed this article, you can check out the full Nuts & Bolts Series here.
Cabinetmakers discuss the advantages of different edgebanding materials and equipment. September 21,
Question
I am wondering about the small hot air tabletop edgebanders. We build face frame cabinets and for the most part only band shelf edges. We currently use a household iron. I see they are only a few hundred dollars. If they are worth it, what is a good brand to get? Any help is appreciated.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor B:
Sure, they are two or three times faster than using an iron. They can't do PVC, and melamine edgebanding isn't the greatest, but the can apply real wood edging.
We are a small face frame shop as well. I recently picked up a table top edgebander from Woodworkers Supply. It's a nice tool for just over $200. The tape guides are better than the Freud. I bought it for the sole purpose of applying pre-finished tape for shelves and it works great.The pre-glued edgebanding is a polyester material or real wood. Hot air melts the pre-glued side just as an iron does. PVC edgebanding is not pre-glued. This type of edgebanding that comes in different thicknesses is used with the nicer edgebanders with glue pots. However you can purchase a PVC peel and stick egdgebanding. I have not been too impressed with the quality of the adhesive used with the peel and stick, and it can also be expensive.Pre-glued PVC is available, but has a short shelf life. PVC also distorts if the machine uses hot bar technology and has a memory that the smaller machines are really not able to deal with successfully. The best results from tabletop machines are with pre-glued polyester or melamine and wood veneer edging.Don't beat yourself up - if this is the only edge banding you do, I would suggest buying plastic snap-on &#; it&#;s very durable and fast. I buy it from Charles McMurray Co. comes in 12' lengths cost less than 20 cents/foot. P400-34TAN comes in white, tan and walnutYears ago I used a hot air edgebander and melamine tape. I thought it was pretty good - until I popped for a real edgebander and started using PVC. Compared to PVC, melamine banding seemed ridiculously brittle and easy to chip. Then I discovered 1mm PVC (instead of the standard .5mm stuff) &#; wow. 1mm PVC is the bomb works very well. It is very durable and has that look of quality customers can see.I wouldn&#;t suggest spending your money on one of the tabletop edgebanders. They never saved me any time over a good vice, iron, wood block, trimmers and sanding block. The big problem is they don't trim the stuff and they require too much set-up and adjustment. Stay small or go big.I recently purchased the Freud table top edgebander and found it to be quicker than the iron. I am just starting to build boxes at home and found the quality of the pre-glued edgebanding I have used so far to be poor. The edgebander has worked great, but the melamine material does chip easily on the ends. This is not from the machine, but from handling the boards before trimming. For shelves I find the table top to be great. For box edging it is fair and for door edging it is poor. I am still trying out new methods and material. I have not tried the wood material yet.
Comment from contributor R:
I build fixtures/cabinets and have a Freud hot air edger and it is really a great way to apply all types of edgebanding (PVC, melamine, and wood). The edging that I prefer is PVC, because it is durable and suits my purpose. I have edged over 500,000 feet with it. I can get some PVC colors pre-glued but the ones I can't, the place where I buy it sends it out to get glue put on it. It is not that expensive for just your common colors. It does require different heat settings according to the climate when applying the amount of glue, or the type of edging itself. Once it is set, it works great.
Want more information on Solid PVC edge banding? Feel free to contact us.