Can melamine-based wood primers help in understanding bonded wood durability?

Abstract

Melamine–formaldehyde adhesives form wood bonds with exterior durability, and the melamine is more easily studied because of its significant nitrogen content (compared with the lack of nitrogen in wood components). In addition, some melamine–formaldehyde chemicals reduce wood swelling [6], enter into wood cell walls [7], and strengthen them [8]. This information led to investigation on the use of melamine-based primers for improving the durability of epoxy-bonded wood. Epoxies bond well to wood, providing good shear strength and high wood failures under dry conditions. However, under wet conditions, wood failure often drops to zero, with some reduction in shear strength. This limits the ability to use epoxies for wood bonding. Epoxies are used where the substrates cannot be brought into close contact or clamping pressures are light; they are also used to repair delaminated or decayed wood beams. The lack of durability led to the development of the HMR primer [4]. In evaluating whether melamine- ased primers can be used in the same manner as the HMR primer, the key piece of data is a high percentage wood failure after water soak using a standard wood bonding epoxy adhesive.

Citation

Frihart, Charles R.; Chandler, Jermal G. 2006. Can melamine-based wood primers help in understanding bonded wood durability?. Proceedings of the 29th annual meeting of the Adhesion Society, Inc., February 19-22, 2006, Jacksonville, Florida: pages 190-192.