glue up problem

[paul wiser]

just finished an end grain cutting board. maple, walnut and purpleheart. when i put the walnut oil finish on, every glue line on the maple stood out like a sore thumb. used titebond III. any ideas. hate to put the boards in the burn bin. any help appreciated.

[Matt Day]

Could you post a picture?

I can't recall ever being able to see a glue line on my cutting boards before. I could only guess there was a problem with the glue up and the joint was too large.

[Peter Quinn]

Tite bond III is brown. Maple is white......................finish is like a highlighter. I'd accept it as the result of using the most rigid waterproof glue available and move on. For clear grade or stain grade maple work I never use type III, always use type II as the glue lime color is more appropriate. Try some experiments with maple scraps. Brown glue on white wood equals visible lines. Yellow glue is much less obvious.

[Wade Lippman]

All I use is TBIII and have never had a glue line show.
I bet the problem is with your walnut oil finish. Can't say I have ever used that.

[Jim Matthews]

Does the glue act as a "resist" to the finish?

I wonder if wet sanding the surface with the finish might
even the penetration to a given depth.

A final coat could be floated over that.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

No offense intended, but it is a cutting board, not art. Use it......

To address the problem, what surface preps did you do? I ran the 1st run glue ups through the drum sander to get them all exactly the same thickness. Then crosscut for the checkerboard. I sand to 220 to get a nice tight glue joint. I use reqular TB on my cutting boards though. TB III is darker as mentioned. My CBs extruded glue for a long time. Is that what's happening? I had to scrape "the squeeze out" for a few months. Couldn't figure out what was going on. My CB was maple/walnut also. Supposedly kiln dried, but after the glue started to ooze out, I was doubting that.

[Keith Hankins]

If you have a visible glue line, then either your pieces are not truly square, and you see glue from a gap. Second thought would be not enough clamp pressure. You should not have to sand to 200 grit, if your pieces are cut square and jointed to a flat surface. Doesnt hurt, but sanding to too high a grit doesn't provide anything extra. Good true edges are all that's required.