Gluing on furniture tops

Has anyone had any experience with gluing tops on furniture with "Resistol no mas clavos"? I suppose in the US it might be sold as "no more nails". I decided to try it on some pieces of furniture. (pics included). I just made small marks for alignment, run a bead of glue around the top of the furniture and set the top on. I put some weight on top. In twenty minutes I could not move the top. It seems really strong, but don't know how long it will last. The stuff is really nice to work with, I could only find it in white, any squeeze out cleans up easy, and it takes a stain. Anyone else had any experience with it?
 
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Generally, when you attach a top - be it a table top or a chest top - you want to allow for wood movement. If the top is solid wood, as the humidity changes the wood will expand and contract across the grain. If you glue it down hard, the wood will crack.

On early American furniture, they put a piece of molding around the bottom of chests of drawers. That piece of molding was attached along the side with nails (and was cross grain to the side wood). Almost all old chests have one or more cracks in the side of the chest because the wood in the side shrunk as it dried and the molding tried keep it from shrinking.

There's a bunch of different ways of attaching tops that allow for seasonal wood movement. One I like is the figure 8 fastener, as shown here.

Mike
 
Thanks Mike for the reply. If solid tops I never glue on, usually I drill a hole a little oversize of the finish nail and nail on, sink the nail and fill, but these are really cheap pieces of furniture, all 1/4" tongue and groove construction, light as a feather. The tops are 1/2 " ply, so I thought gluing on would save some time and avoid the nail holes, guess I'm really wrong here. Guess I'll just wait and see what happens. Jerry
 
Thanks Mike for the reply. If solid tops I never glue on, usually I drill a hole a little oversize of the finish nail and nail on, sink the nail and fill, but these are really cheap pieces of furniture, all 1/4" tongue and groove construction, light as a feather. The tops are 1/2 " ply, so I thought gluing on would save some time and avoid the nail holes, guess I'm really wrong here. Guess I'll just wait and see what happens. Jerry
If it's inexpensive and you don't expect it to last a long time, I suppose gluing it down would work. I would glue the front and then use some fasteners at the back that allowed movement. If the top is ply, it's isn't going to move that much - especially compared to solid wood.

The figure 8 fasteners allow you to attach tops without any holes in the top - you attach those from underneath.

Mike
 
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