Thread: Use By Date

According to the company, 12 months, check out the link under physical properties.

http://www.titebond.com/titebond_woo...Wood_Glue.aspx

I don't think there is a used by date on the glue bottle it self.

So that being said and the best option that I have is to make a note of the date on the actual glue bottle the date I purchased the glue. This will at least give me a guild to how long I have had it. I don't purchase very large bottles as my hobby does not require me to glue up every weekend.

I remember seeing a video from the wood whisperer about glue and he mention that if the glue develops lumps in the bottle then it is time to throw it out.

If I'm starting an important largish project I'll buy a fresh bottle of glue. The rest of the time I chuck anything that has gone hard or lumpy, but I still have a few bottles with not much in them. I'll now make a test glue joint on what I'm using with anything else, give it a day to cure and smack it with a hammer to see if it holds and then to destruction and see if the glue line fails or the timber.

So far I haven't had any failures on PVA's sometimes up to 10 years old.

I think that the 12 months Shelf Life specified by Titebond might be a pretty conservative figure. I bought five x 473 ml bottles of Titebond 3 from Lazarides during their closing down sale in 2014. The glue was heavily reduced (only $3.00 each), but I was warned that they were old stock and had been on the shelf at Lazarides for a year or so. So theses bottles had to be a couple of years old when I bought them, considering that they would have sat in a distribution warehouse in the USA for a while, and the Australian Distributor's warehouse, before ending up at Lazarides.

When I opened the first bottle late in 2014, I did some test joints (simple lap joints) and then broke the test pieces, to make sure that the glue had not gone stale. The glue seemed to still be quite good as none of the test pieces failed in the glue line - they all failed in the wood either side of the glue line. I've recently opened the third of those bottles, and again did a couple of test pieces, and the third bottle of glue is still OK.

So, my conclusion is that the 12 months shelf life specified on Titebond's web site is very conservative, as far as Titebond 3 is concerned.

From my experience using Titebond when I lived in Canada for a few years, the storage conditions which do drastically reduce the storage life of Titebond Original, 2 and 3 are freezing conditions. If the glue bottles are stored in an unheated workshop in a Canadian winter, the glue seems to separate and crystallise within a few months, if the workshop temperature is allowed to fall below zero centigrade. Fortunately, with our Australian climate, that problem doesn't effect too many Australian woodworkers.

However, that doesn't apply to Titebond Liquid Hide Glue, as that stuff has a Use Before Date stamped on the bottle, and for a while in 2014, it was hard to find that glue on the shop shelves in Australia that wasn't already past it's use before date, or very close to it.

Regards,

RoyG

So really what you all appear to be saying is, try it on a scrap piece - and then try to break the joint for peace of mind and assess the bonding.

The alternative is to buy fresh glue on every new project.

Originally Posted by cava

.....The alternative is to buy fresh glue on every new project.

That could be a little extreme if you were only doing small projects, but if you were to build a work bench then gluing up for the top you will pretty much use a lot of glue. At least I did when I build a work bench and I was scrapping the bottom of the bottle trying to get every last drop out(Sunday and Carbatec was closed ).

I currently have two bottles of the Titebond Original, one of the 473ml size and a 946ml size. The 473ml only has a small amount left so I purchased another bottle.

At one stage I had a few bottle of various types and one bottle of Titebond II had gone hard(not lumpy but hard). I lost about half in that bottle.

I buy mine in the 4L containers and some time ago I forgot I had one under the bench. For a couple of years.

When I finally opened the bottle it'd settled out into a lumpy mass at the bottom and even after thorough mixing (drill & paint stirrer) trials showed it was pretty well degraded beyond practical use.

Mind you, even though I'd had it for a couple of years there is no telling how long it had sat on the shelf before I'd purchased it. Also, where it was stored was against a North facing tin wall which saw pretty hefty extremes in temperature... most definitely not the ideal place to store any glues or finishes... or any item one cares about.

However, I've also used it for glue-ups just as the bottle has started to form lumps and - to the best of my knowledge - it has worked fine.

So I'm inclined to think that settling out is a better indicator of when it's actually approaching it's use-by date, rather than any hard'n'fast time frame.

Being in Qld country, we get a "few" hot days. I keep all of my glues, spirit stains, Ubeaut waxes and EEE in polystyrene vegetable boxes with lids. These boxes are usually thrown out from the corner grocery stores, the owners have always been happy to get rid of them. They keep the contents at an even temperature rather than at the extremes we tend to experience.