This woodworker keeps running into glue residue which ruins his staining efforts. Is there a secret for detecting the glue residue? And can he fix it after he’s applied the stain?
Michael Dresdner: There are a number of ways to see glue, including adding color to it, adding UV visual pigments (detectable only under blacklight), pre-wetting (raising the grain of) the wood, and so on to make glue obvious prior to staining. However, by far the best is to pre-finish. That means masking off the areas that are to be glue surfaces with “painter’s tape” and finishing the parts before assembly. That way glue can’t get under the stain since it goes on before the glue. Besides, any squeezeout will come off immediately, since most glue does not stick to most finishes.
As for fixing it afterward, it depends largely on the stain, but you can usually scrape the glue off, resand the scraped area with the same grit and type of paper you used before staining, and restain just the affected spot.
