DIY LVL

[thomas_neil]

I’m in the process of building my own stand and got all the 3/4” plywood cut today. The goal is to glue the 8” strips together to make a kind of DIY lam beam. I’m going to be using these for my horizontal supports on an 8’ 300 gallon tank. For the upright supports I’m just going to be using dimensional 2x6.

My question is during the glue up and clamping, should I get a piece of metal angle to get them as straight as possible or just use a bunch of clamps with some 2x4 to distribute the clamp force.

I’ll be using titebond III for the glue and also using 1 1/4” screws after it’s clamped so I can clamp it, screw them together and unclamp them to do it all in one day. I can skip the screws and just do a few a day too if you all think the screws are a bad idea.

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

I would use the fluted Wood dowels to make it stronger. Also go lightly over your Joining surfaces with 100 to 120 grit sandpaper. The guys at the Cabinet Shop at work did this just before glueing. BTW, they had a Vacuum Bag System for clamping. This is the absolute best. Wish I could justify the cost.

 

[thomas_neil]

I can’t justify the cost either. I have been just using 8 clamps and a couple 2x4s on the strong side to clamp them together and about an entire bottle of glue per glue up. Glad I got the gallon bottle.

I also have been hitting it with some sand paper as well to rough it up a little. Decided not to use screws, just where I can see a small gap to draw it together completely then will remove. Did 4 today(glueing 4 pieces at a time to get 2 beams). First one wasnt perfect so will probably use that for the cross bracing (acrylic tank so going to put pieces across to cover the width) but the second glue up looked a lot better.

I didn’t think about dowels, I might pick some up tomorrow for the remaining glue ups, have 2 more sets to go!

 

[Kodski]

Are you doing two 3/4" strips laminated together or three glued together? I would think two wouldn't be quite as strong. I'd warrant 3 strips together with a 6" width over two with an 8" width. The strength of laminated beams comes from the wood fibers being layered in all different directions. Meaning it could very well be more beneficial to add more layers of plywood than it would be to add a wider strip. I'll have to run the numbers on that but I'll let you know.

 

[thomas_neil]

Appreciate the feed back, I still have strips left over so I’ll wait to hear back before glueing those together!

Also doing 2 8” strips of 3/4” so it would line up with the 2x6 vertical supports, which I plan on doing 3 per long side and obviously two on each corner