Gluing silver wire into wood

[MJC]

Hi all,
I'm attempting to make wooden teardrop earrings and trying to glue .7mm diameter sterling silver wire into a 1mm diameter hole, drilled 1cm deep in wood. I'm using five-minute Araldite but although the glue fixes to the wire it doesn't want to hold on the wood and the wire pulls out easily. The wood is either exotic hard wood or dyamond wood and neither will take. Has anyone had experience with this method before? Any guidance or advice would be most welcome. Thank you.

[CJ57]

I have always used araldite rapid for rivets into wood, usually lignum vitae or ebony. You might need to pump the wire in and out to get rid of the air perhaps but I can't say I've ever had any come out. Rapid does take a couple of hours to set completely though so maybe it hasn't hardened enough
I've just read your post again and wondering why you are making the holes so big, the hole would be best the size of the wire for a tight fit

[ps_bond]

The way Bill Moran used to embellish his knife handles was to cut (very thin chisels, end on) the line into the wood, then hammer the silver strip in. No adhesive.
Always found lignum vitae a bit of a pig with adhesives; I tended to prep it with acetone prior to gluing up.

As Caroline says, match your hole to the wire diameter. You could also burr or roughen the section of silver going into the wood to give the adhesive more to grab.
Have you looked at pique work as a comparison?

[CJ57]

Forgot to say score the wire too as you can't roughen the wood . I usually just cross hatch with a needle file for large areas so a couple of scores for that length of wire. You are right Peter lignum is dense and waxy and I've been inlaying it rather than the wires being weight bearing but I've used other woods over the years. Pretty sure the smaller hole and leaving it to set properly will do the trick.

[Dennis]

As said above, the hole might still be waxy, or contain fine dust, so I would also wind a wisp of cotton wool around a very thin broken saw blade with the teeth pointing out of the hole and wet it with a little meths, or acetone as Peter suggested.

Then follow with dry cotton wool. Then introduce the glue into the hole with the saw blade too, so that the hole is coated.

My experience is that there will be some air trapped when you put in the post and this will cause the post to lift back out again. By using the rapid epoxy, you can hold the post in place until the glue has hardened enough to avoid this.

Unfortunately, having a really close fit for the post is counter productive when glueing into a blind hole, because the glue quickly becomes viscous and you need an escape route for surplus glue and air. Dennis.

[MJC]

Many thanks Caroline, Peter and Dennis for your suggestions.

I made the holes oversize because I thought larger would enable more glue to hold the wire in place. Finally managed to get the wires to hold by roughening the silver with a needle file and thoroughly working the glue into the hole as suggested. Dennis was correct about the amount of fine dust left in the hole after drilling. And I wasn't leaving them for long enough before testing them. Who knew 'rapid' meant several hours? Thanks again.

Michael

[ajda]

Who knew 'rapid' meant several hours?

Yes there's a big difference with epoxies like this between setting time and full curing time to reach maximum strength.

[vernon]

Another way to get the wire to stay in would be to open out the bottom of the hole by moving the drill about in a rocking motion when fully inserted this would leave space at the bottom of the hole for the glue to form a kind of plug.