What’s your latest project? Does it involve adhesive? When you’re working with glue on hardwood lumber in Franklin County, MA, you might end up with glue smears. These can be hard to avoid and very frustrating. You want your finished product to look impeccable, but you have an unsightly glue smear on the wood. What can you do?
Fortunately, your project is not ruined. However, you must be careful in how you approach the solution. Applying the wrong methods will only make the issue worse. You don’t want to end up with scratches, scrapes or a bigger mess than when you started. You may turn your small smear into a large eyesore.
To properly rid hardwood lumber in Franklin County, MA of glue smears, adhere to these dos and don’ts.
To the untrained wood and glue crafter, sandpaper might seem like the obvious solution to rid your wood of that ugly smear. A few passes with that paper and the smear will be gone, right? Wrong. Don’t underestimate the power of that glue. It will adhere to the sandpaper and render it useless. Rather than sanding away the glue smear, you will end up with a piece of gooey paper that only smears the glue around even more.
This solution will effectively remove the glue smear from your hardwood lumber in Franklin County, MA. However, not all scraping is created equal. Be sure to use the proper method of scraping to get the results you want. For glue smears, a cabinet scraper is best. Functioning like a plane on the surface of the wood, it will cut the glue away from the wood with its sharp edge.
To use the cabinet scraper, bend it toward you, angle the top away from you and push it across the glue smear. Be careful to only scrape the glued portion, or you will remove more wood than you mean to and cause additional imperfections. With a few careful scrapes of the cabinet scraper, you can achieve a glue-smear-free surface.
The second effective method to remove glue smears from hardwood lumber in Franklin County, MA is to dye them. It may feel like cheating by simply covering up your mistakes, but it works. Since you are using additional skills to dye the glue, you can remind yourself it’s less like cheating and more like applying in-depth woodworking knowledge!
To dye the glue, apply a color glaze over the glue. Make adjustments to the color until it dyes the same color as the stain on the wood. This process may require some patience to get a perfect match, but in the end, it will be worth the effort. Once you get a good match, you will have transformed your glue smear into a fully camouflaged blemish that blends perfectly into the background. Voila! No more glue smear.
Would you like additional tips for working with glue and hardwood lumber in Franklin County, MA? The staff at Forest Products Associates is friendly and knowledgeable and would love to assist you with any questions or concerns you have. Contact us today about your next project!
