Thread: Suggestions for glue clean up

Before glueup, I line the inside edges with blue painters tape. After separating the lid run a scalpel along the corners and it all peels right off.

With your job? Id just run a flat chisel down the inside after scoring it in the very corner with a scalpel (Eckersleys $4)

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Why are you using araldite to glue boxes?

epoxy which was left to dry on the surface of timber doesn't stick very good unless the timber was very course grained. So a chisel will be able to pick big flakes of the epoxy off the surface fairly easily. Then use a chisel to clean the corners. If you had of finished the inside of the box first with just about anything, the epoxy doesn't stick at all.

I always put a coat of shellac on the inside of boxes before assembly, and smear a line of cheap wax next to the corners. Any excess glue just peels off, and then I clean the wax off with a toothbrush & white spirits.

Thanks all! That sounds like my best going to be some careful chisel and scalpel work. I screwed it up in the first place because I normally rebate the top and bottom of boxes before glue up, but for this one I decided (in hindsight, stupidly!) to just do a butt joint for the top and bottom, and didn't think about how much glue would get smeared around as I aligned and clamped everything...

Must remember to prep more carefully next time.

Using araldite because the top and bottom are blackwood and I have had really bad green stain issues with PVA with this particular piece of blackwood - worse than other bits. The only glues I had around that weren't PVA were the epoxy and the polyurethane - ironically I decided against the poly to avoid having to clean up the mess!

I only get green staining from titebond II and III. Titebond original has never gone green on me with blackwood. The green stain does plane/sand out, but you need to remove a bit of material which isnt appropriate for a box.

Ah! That's interesting, I might have to get some tite bond I and give it a try, I normally only keep 2 and 3 in the shop.

Yep, Kuffy is right. On the picture above, the sides are blackwood. TB1 plays nicely.

This one below the BW was from a member (Clive Oldfield). It is just a sample box that now sits gathering dust.

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I was buying a smoothing plane from the folks at fine tools anyway, so I added a chisel plane to that purchase - a combination of chisel and chisel plane work cleaned up the epoxy OK, enough to try installing some lining for the first time- it's good enough for my own use at least!

The best part of this thread though was to use TB1 with blackwood - I love blackwood and just did the joinery for another box successfully with TB1 and no green stain to be seen! So thank you to Kuffy and woodPixel .

A cabinet scraper may be a cheap way out. Coarse burr on one side for glue removal, fine on the other to finish.

I would be using a PVA wood glue.

When I make a glue joint, I always immediately wipe the excess with a damp cloth before it dries. You can eliminate the problem before it really exists this way. Whatever's left over is scraper work. If it's in a tight corner, do the best you can and then use a chisel, either shearing it or scraping, to get the rest.

There's always tape, but that's time consuming and potentially expensive. That blue, painter tape isn't cheap.

Cheers,
Luke

This is what it ended up looking like - this was the first real box off a new incra i-box, so it's a bit crappy in some respects. Also the first time I've tried installing lining rather than flocking, and I still need to sand back some of the wipe on poly on the top and re-finish, so don't judge me too harshly!





Immediately after this I went to spotlight and got some supplies to install lining via some heavy card instead of straight to the base, should've done it beforehand!

Its very sturdy

It would be quite cool to round over all the edges and corners, even the insides. I like the dimensions, but it looks so "heavy". Rounding the fingers would add mystique to it.

Yeah, I thought about the concepts of delicacy and elegance and decided I wanted nothing to do with them!

Rounded corners is an interesting idea for this one, it would certainly make it a bit more exciting! Will have to think about whether I want to work on it a bit more or just call it an imperfect box and use it somewhere myself.