Dried Hide Glue, will a hair dryer soften it?

[Glenn Samuels]

I have gotten some excellent responses about which to use, a plane or a scraper to remove dried hide glue from a panel. I have another question about hide glue. I understand that dried hide glue can be softened with a hot damp cloth. What damage would I cause to the panels if I first used a hairdryer to soften the dried (2 day) glue squeeze and then gently scrape it off or wipe it off with a hot cloth. Are there any advantages/disadvantages to this method? Thanks

[Jim Matthews]

I understand traditional hide glue can be dissolved with another application, and scraped off.

If you're using dry heat, I don't think the material will loosen.
I use the hide glue in a bottle, and a little water will soften most excess.

[Chris Vandiver]

Grab a hair dryer and cautiously give it a try.

[Jim Belair]

If you get the surface warm enough to wipe the glue off you risk the joint opening too. You could reclamp it I suppose to avoid this.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Are you asking because you are thinking about doing it or just wondering what would happen? Because it's not necessary to soften it in order to scrape it off. If you are just wondering what would happen, it could be anything from nothing to joint or glue seam coming apart, depending on how you do it.

Depending on what kind of hairdryer you'd use, probably most of them don't have enough heat to cause hide glue to soften or come apart. You can use it to heat up parts before gluing, but it takes more temperature to reverse it. In the musical instrument building and repair circles (I assume period furniture and restoration people use the same), often preferred choice is cloth iron, hot iron, heating blankets and 100 watt (some people use higher wattage) light bulb as heat source. But no one goes that far to try to soften glue squeeze out in order to scrape. If squeeze out is such a concern, they would just peel it off when hide glue cooled and gelled, or use blunt chisel and scoop it off the surface clean. In a normal circumstance, glue squeeze out is taken care of by a piece of high carbon steel, otherwise known as scraper.

[mike holden]

Wet it with a damp rag and then apply heat. Rather than try to scrape it off, use a rag to wipe it off in layers adding some moisture each time. Eventually it will be somewhat level, at which point allow to dry thoroughly and use a scraper to remove the last bits of upstanding glue. You will not be able to remove the glue from the grain, but that should not be necessary - one of the joys of hide glue is that it does not telegraph through finishes.
Mike