Panel glue-up question

[Laurie Brown]

I've just completed my first panel glue-up. Everything was jointed and planed square and smooth and fit together great. I glued it up, clamped it, and now the glue is dry and hard and the boards are still nice and straight. My question: How do I get rid of the yucky hard glue lines between the panels now? Should I sand them off? If so, what grit should I be looking at using?
Oh, the panels are hard maple, FYI.

[Rob Russell]

Laurie,

This will be a great excuse to buy a tool!

I use a Sandvik 2" carbide scraper. It knocks the glue off very quickly. It's pretty inexpensive - $20 or so.

Rob

[tod evans]

laurie, you can sand the glue off, if the panel is small enough you can send it through the planer, you can do like rob suggests and scrape it off...i keep an old plastic handled stanly chisel 2" wide just for this purpose.....if you want to sand i`d attack it with 80grit first then work the whole panel .......02 tod

[Steve Clardy]

Scraper.
One tip is to scrap the glue overflow off before it completely dries.
Sometimes when it is completely dry, scraping it off will pull chunks of wood out of the panel.

[Jim Becker]

I do what Steve does...scrape it off after about an hour while the piece is still clamped. That greatly reduces the amount of hard glue to remove...and that should be done with a scraper first followed by your regular sanding regimen.

[Tom Jones III]

If the glue is dry, I use a $2.00 card scraper. As soon as I am done clamping I wipe off the excess glue with a damp paper towel so I usually have very little to clean up. The wet towel also makes for a better finish since you are removing as much extra glue as possible.

[Jerry Ingraham]

I use a carbide paint scraper after the glue is dry. The glue beads pop right off.

[Jim W. White]

Ditto Rob and Jerry.

Carbide Paint Scraper that can be bought at any of the big box hardware stores. Works extremely well and the blade has held up awesome.

.....Jim

[Jerry Olexa]

Some people will mosten a rag and wipe off excess glue while it is still wet (just after glue up). You have to be careful to not go overboard on H2O or it'll weaken the joint. Just a different approach. Jim's idea I think is the best.

[Steve Clardy]

I never use the wet rag trick. With grain that oak has, you can get the glue dissolved only to have it go into the pores.
So. Let it dry somewhat, scrap it off, let it cure, then sand it off.

[Howard Acheson]

You should remove the excess glue before it hardens. Once it is hard, scraping it off frequently removes some of the wood fibers leaving unsightly marks. If you get any wood removal when scraping, go to sanding.

In the future, remove the excess glue while it is still somewhat flexible. Use a scraper. However, keep in mind that a waterbased adhesive will cause the glueline to swell above the surface somewhat. If you scrape the glue off you risk also removing this raised wood ridge. When it fully dries the area will shrink and you can end up with a depression at each glueline.

What I do, is this. When I do my dry fit for panels, I run a line of paste wax down the glueline extending about a 1/2" to 1" from the glueline. Do this on both sides of the panel. Now, when you do you glue up, let the excess harden. When you go to scrape it off, it pops right off without removing any wood. To remove any exess wax, wipe the glueline down with some mineral spirits. That and the sanding will remove any of the wax.

[Kyle Kraft]

I plane my strips to 7/8", glue up the panel, use a Stanley Surform pocket plane to rip off the excess glue then run the whole panel through the planer again taking it to 3/4". I repeat this process again if I need a panel wider than my planers capacity, then make a final careful glue-up.

Kyle

[Rob Blaustein]

That wax trick sounds good, I will give that a try for my next glue up. Do people ever use the blue painter's tape applied right at the glue line, removing it after the glue dries?

[Steve Clardy]

I do as Kyle does on panel glueups. Start with 7/8, 15/16 material, glue up, run through planer to 25/32. The 1/32 is for final sanding.

[Barry O'Mahony]

Do people ever use the blue painter's tape applied right at the glue line, removing it after the glue dries?I do on joinery, but not on panels. I'm usually able to just get small beads on panels, and just use a carbide scraper once they're dried a bit.

In the panic that often ensues during a glue-up with joints, glue sometimes gets smeared everywhere, so I use the blue tape.

[Dave Richards]

It's too late for this panel but when I do glue ups like this, I dry clamp everything first. It's good to have a dry run anyway. while the parts are clamped together I run a bar of paraffin along the joint(s) to repel the glue. Then, I go through the glue up as usual. when the squeeze out has hardened up, I remove it with a card scraper. This also removes most of the paraffin, too. Any remaining paraffin can be removed with a quick swipe of mineral spirits which also makes it apparent if there's any glue on the surface that would show in finishing.

Paraffin is much less expensive than blue masking tape, or any other color for that matter. It's easy to use, doesn't leave any sticky residue if I don't get back to it right away and it doesn't dry out. I'm still working on the first bar of four in a box after about 3 years. It also works great for lubing the soles of hand planes.


Edited to add: don't touch the squeeze out until it hardens. You'll just end up smearing it. ;)