glueing over stain

[Thomas R. Zack]

While staining the raised panel for my raised frame and panel 'false' doors I got ahead of myself and stain the rails and stiles too. Will my regular ole titebond still work for the frame glue up or should I use a different glue? NOTE I did not stain tenons or inside the mortises!

[Harvey Pascoe]

What kind of stain? If its oil based I'm afraid your sunk. Otherwise, why don't you try doing a test on a stained glue up with scrap? I've made the same mistake with water base finish and even enamel paint, but remedied the problem by a light scraping with a chisel on the glue surface and that held okay.

[Kent A Bathurst]

I don't understand........do the panels fit inside grooves in the rails and stiles? If so, why would you need to glue the panels, rather than leave them loose for expansion? The mortise and tenon joints in typical frame + panel assemblies are where the glue goes.

Assuming I just "don't get it".........sand the stain off the surfaces that have to be glued. Even if you cannot get the little bit that is deep in the grain pores, you will have cleaned up the main adhesion surface, and you'll be fine.

[Prashun Patel]

In a frame and panel, the panel floats. the only glue would go in the mortises and tenons, which you say are unstained. You should be fine, therefore.

[Conrad Fiore]

Prashun has it correct. As long as your major glue surfaces, tenons and mortises are free of stain, you will have no problem. The endgrain on the shoulders of the tenons offers little glue bond strength. The OP only askes about the frame glue-up, nothing about gluing the panel into the frame.

[Thomas R. Zack]

Thanks for clearing that up Conrad. I guess the only thing I stained that would be very minor is the edges of the stiles that butt up to the shoulder of the tenon. Minor issue, correct?

[Kent A Bathurst]

Less than minor. Zero issue - the end grain at the shoulder of tenons does not do very good at all as a glue surface. You don't need to bother with glue on those surfaces at all. It is the long-grain tenon cheeks that mate with the long grain faces in the mortise that carry the load.

[Chris Fournier]

Glue it up but be extremely careful about squeeze out - that can ruin you under these conditions.