Glue line repair?

[John Neel]

I have a breakfast room table that is a glue up of maple boards that are about 1 1/2 " square in cross section. It looks somewhat like a big plain cutting board with nice rounded edges. The glue lines have a slight brown tint, definitely darker than the maple. Could it be Plastic Resin Glue or a polyurethane like Gorilla Glue? In several spots the glue line has opened up for less than an inch at the end. Is there any way to fill in these openings? Can the progressive opening be stopped? Is there a real repair possible without taking the table apart?

Thank you for any help.

John

[dennis thompson]

John
Maybe put some glue in the cracks, clamp across the table to pull the cracks together & use pocket screws from underneath the table to hold the cracks together
Dennis

[Prashun Patel]

I agree about trying to clamp and screw from underneath.

As far as repairing the glue line 'creep' - which can be a problem with wood glues, the harder part will be repairing the finish.

If you've assessed that you can strip, recolor, and refinish the top easily, then I'd take very light passes with a card scraper.

[lowell holmes]

I had to repair glue joints in the chairs of a dining set belonging to a family member.

Faulty repairs had been made using white wood glue. These repairs failed and were reglued with Gorilla glue. These repairs failed also.

I took the chairs apart, cleaned the white wood glue off with hot white vinegar-water. The gorilla glue was scraped off.

The original glue had been hide glue. Warm water will loosen that glue. I reglued the joints using real hide glue. You can take the top off of a soft drink can and place it in a small pot of boiling water. The glue flakes are soaked in water before hand and then put into the soft drink can to become liquid. You don't need a glue pot. The glue is applied using a cheap throw away bristle brush.

The advantage of using hide glue to repair a failed hide glue joint is that it reactivates the old glue. You do not have to clean the old glue from the joint.
My repairs are holding.

Check the failed joints to see if the glue is hide glue. If it is hide glue, warm water will loosen the joint. As stated earlier, a warm mixture of white vinegar and water will loosen old white carpenters glue.

[Chris Friesen]

Personally I'd just fill in the cracks with a good epoxy and avoid the screws.

If it gets really bad, I'd just rip the table down the glue line with the skinniest blade I have (ultra-thin kerf 6.5" cordless circular saw blades work well), joint it, and glue it back together.

[Curt Harms]

Personally I'd just fill in the cracks with a good epoxy and avoid the screws.

If it gets really bad, I'd just rip the table down the glue line with the skinniest blade I have (ultra-thin kerf 6.5" cordless circular saw blades work well), joint it, and glue it back together.

I'll bet that's the best long term fix, and might well prove the easiest. If it were mine and it's too big or awkward to use a table saw, I'd get a sharp carbide blade and make a saw board to run my circular saw on. Make the first pass very shallow to score the finish but minimize or eliminate chipout. Make a second pass to cut it through. I'd experiment first though to make sure i could get a nice clean cut using 2 passes. I use that technique when cutting melamine coated particle board on a table saw. It makes a perfectly clean edge with no steps or chipout. A melamine blade would perhaps do the same but I don't have one and don't do enough melamine work to justify buying one.

Incidentally, this is one place a Porter Cable 314 trim saw works very well. Mine will follow my saw board perfectly with a Freud carbide blade. Being a worm drive it's longer than it is wide and doesn't want to get cockeyed on the sawboard like a sidewinder saw might. I haven't used a sidewinder in this application but the "Norm Saw" works great. The limitation is depth of cut--about 1"

[Frank Drew]

John

Of all the woods I have experience with, hard maple is the one most prone to glue-joint failure, at least if we're talking about commercial maple cutting boards.