Masking Glue Joints
We’ve all heard that using painter’s tape to mask off parts for gluing can save a lot of time later on when we are unclamping and cleaning up the squeeze-out. But how many of us actually take the time to do that?
We’ve been making new cabinets for our kitchen for some time now (more on that later). I am currently making the eighth cabinet, a 36 inch wide three drawer base cabinet. The cabinets are shaker style. For the drawer fronts, I am making shaker rails and stiles, with a plywood panel inside.
One thing about these drawers and drawer fronts that always seems to take a long time is the glue-up and post glue-up cleanup. All of the little nooks and crannies seem to fill with glue squeeze-out, and take a long time to clean out. So this time I decided to tape the boundaries between glued surfaces and non-glued. I did this on the drawer boxes first, and the results were great. After unclamping, the tape came off and there was no squeeze-out left on the visible surfaces.
I decided to try this on the drawer fronts as well. The rails and stiles were routed with a MLCS Shaker Rail and Stile bit set. Taping these was a little more complicated and time consuming.
But after a while, I got all three taped and glued up.
I let them all sit for an hour or two before removing the tape. I think this was critical, as if the clue had cured, it would have been very difficult to remove from some of the tight detail crevices.
As you can see, there isn’t much cleanup left to do. A quick pass over the joints with a sander was all that was needed, and they were off to be painted.
Thanks for reading!
