How To Clean Up Glue Squeeze-Out

It's easy.  Here's my secret:

Use hide glue.

photo courtesy titebond.com

Any hide glue does the same, but I had recently used this Titebond product, which I have had excellent results with. 

Today I had to clean up some leg blanks I laminated together for my walnut dining table.

Stop laughing, YES... this is the same table I have been working on for about two years.

Normally when I clamp something up, I use a wet rag to wipe off as much squeeze out as I can.  I can not remember having had any trouble doing this with hide glue.  I have heard some have had troubles with PVA glue showing up during finishing when wiped off this way, though.

When I did these legs, I must have been inattentive for this step, as they all dried with lots of sloppy squeeze out.  In fact, one leg looked like it had been painted with glue.

What to do?  I thought about scraping it with a chisel or some other tool, but I hate using my sharp tools for this.

Instead, I got a bucket of hot water and a rag.  I would have used my heat gun, but couldn't find it.  I realized that using it with a bucket of water might not be such a good idea anyway.

Duh.

But the hot water worked way better than I thought.  I just squeezed enough water out of the rag so it wouldn't drip everywhere, and laid it over the dried squeeze-out.  After a few seconds I just started scrubbing away.

Hide glue is reversible with heat and water, so it doesn't take much to clean it up in this manner.  That one board that was completely caked with hide glue was cleaned up in less than a minute.

Water will raise the grain, but after a glue up my work needs to be planed anyway.  After cleaning up this dried squeeze-out I planed a reference face and an edge with a handplane on each of the legs, then drove them over to Dictum to dimension in their power planer. 

Perhaps in another two years this stupid table will be done!