Jointing/Planning Glued Up Pieces

[Richard Amabile]

I am making posts for a bed out of white pine and they need to be 3 1/4 square. For each post I have glued two pieces of 1 3/4 thick by 3 1/2 wide pieces of the required length. But, as usual, I have quite a bit of squeeze out from the glue up. I don't want this to show up when I stain it and would like to put these glued up pieces (after chipping off the major parts of the glue) through the jointer and/or planner to get them down to the 3 1/4 requirement and get them really square.
My question relates to the potential problem of putting a glued up board through a jointer or planner. Will the glue chip the blades of these machines? I seem to have heard that this is a potential problem. Both machines are relatively new and work quite well right now. I would hate to have to change blades because I chipped them by putting glued up boards through them. I do not own a drum stander right now.
Any thoughts or experience with this would be appreciated. I tried to do a search, but was not able to find something relevant.

[Jerome Hanby]

I haven't had problems. I use a scrapper to get all the surface glue then take the lightest cut that I can. In my case my goal wasn't cleaning up glue, it was preparing the piece (I've never had that kind of glue up go so perfectly that I didn't need to joint/plane...). Now those stupid pin nails that I forgot about...

[Matt Kestenbaum]

This is not a bad technique for making a table top final thickness. I think you are not finding much discussion about it for two reasons: its a good practice to mill all your boards flat, square, parallel and of uniform thickness before glue-up and only worry about smoothing after the joints have cured, and second because most hobbyists don't own planers wide enough that it would be helpful on larger panels.

I completed a workbench building class (like 60 hours Mon-Sat) over the summer and the technique for building up the bench top was to glue up a core about 19" wide, cure and then level/final-thickness on the planer. Just make sure that you have no little beads of glue on the surface...these WILL nick up you knives. Use a scraper aggressively over each joint...both sides of the panel prior to feeding it to the machine.

[Chip Lindley]

Dried glue does have the tendency to chip planer/jointer knives. For that reason, take the time to scrape off as much glue as possible after the assembly is clamped up. It's much easier to scrape off rubbery glue after 20 minutes, than to attack tenaciously hardened glue!

If you must skip some ooze beneath the clamps, you are still ahead of the game. After the piece comes out of the clamps, finish the glue removal. I sometimes use a broad wood chisel to slice off hardened glue squeeze-out; faster than scraping!

[Richard Amabile]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I did joint and plane the boards today after scraping off all the major glue spots. The glue was not soft, but also not completely hard. I then took very light cuts on the jointer holding the board more against the fence and lightly letting it rest on the table to skim off the glue lines. After jointing lightly, just enough to get the board flat again, I put them through the planner again with light cuts to square them up. All worked very well and I can not see any evidence of chips in the knives of either machine.

[Clark Harbaugh]

For future reference, the one thing you might think about is that when milling to thickness, taking lighter cuts will actually wear out the blade quicker than taking a normal cut. For the most part, a planer or jointer blade does the same amount of work for a 1/64" cut as it does for a 1/16" cut. Think about it like this, taking (4) 1/64" cuts vs taking (1) 1/16" cut actually causes 4 times the wear on the blades to get to the same result. The exceptions, of course are wide boards or extremely hard woods.

You are correct, though, that planing a glue joint can tend to put a groove in your blades. For that reason, I try and run my work at at angle so the whole blade gets it's turn at abuse. I find it easier to sharpen a blade that is consistantly dull than to try and get rid of a single nick. That may be some backward logic, though.