Strategies for Squeeze-out
Expert tips and tricks for cleaning up glue

Synopis: Squeeze-out is inevitable. And if your philosophy, like Tim Rousseau’s, is to err on the side of too much glue rather than too little, you’ll need a variety of approaches to deal with it. Here, he offers his tips and tricks for managing squeeze-out, whether it happens on panels, mortise-and-tenon joints, inside the corners of cases, or in and around dovetail joints.
I’ve been teaching furniture making for more than 15 years. I’m a fairly relaxed person, so I rarely get too worked up when my students make mistakes. That being said, when I find hard, dried glue somewhere on a student’s piece, I start to hear the voice of master craftsman and teacher Alan Peters: “we’ve taught them nothing—nothing.” with Alan, it was the random-orbit sander that got him going; for me, it’s the dried glue.
When I learned to make…
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Comments
I use epoxy for most of my glue ups. Ok it is messy, you have to wear gloves and it destroys your clothes if you get it on them and you always do. It also takes several hours set. The reason I use it is because there are no issues with finishing. You get a little extra on something just wipe it off with a paper towel. Ok you have a big smear showing on the money side of the piece. Who cares when you add your finish, I mostly use a tung oil, it just disappears.
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