Greg Guarino wrote:
This is mostly a "curiosity" question. My schedule allows only brief
encounters with woodworking, so anything I glue up tends to stay clamped
well past the recommended time; several days, on average. But I'm finally
assembling the (prefinished) parts of the second pair of bookcases and I
noticed something this morning.

The shelves are in dadoes, and I've been assembling the bookcases face
down. I applied some shiny packing tape to the work surface under the
areas where glue might drip out. That kept the work from adhering to the
bench, but left some hardened glue in a couple of spots (on the first two
bookcases). That wasn't too much of a problem. I scraped it down flush
before I attached the face frames, and the areas were small.

I glued up another unit last night at about 8 p.m. I decided to have a
look at it this morning, at 7 a.m. I removed the clamps and had a look
underneath. Sure enough, there was squeeze-out, but it was a lot softer
than I would have imagined after 11 hours. Is this possibly because it
was relatively sealed in by the non-porous tape? Even some that had
collected in an exposed corner was pretty soft. The temperature in the
garage would likely have been in the low 60s.

Not unusual ... temperature plays a significant part in curing time. Read
the label, or find the manufacturer's data sheet online where they will
usually have the recommended working/clamping times at the various
temperatures.

With many woodworking glues I won't consider gluing a project when the
temperature is in the 50 degree range at all, and you were right on the
edge of that.

Check your glue specs and follow them

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