Old Joints, glueing

Sanding , carefully to preserve the crisp edges of your joints, would be the way to go.  Won't take off enough wood fibers to loosen the joint but will freshen the joint faces.

I did quite a study of glues and gluing techniques when I was studying this fine craft and found it makes a difference in my test samples taken to failure.  Simple lap joints, not structural, so all the stress was on the glue line.  My notes say I was looking at all this in around April 2006.  I was hoping to find a link but not yet.

Sanding brakes down the surface tension and allows the glue to flow out across the surface and to soak further into the wood.

For instance you can test it yourself: take two samples of your wood, one cut some time ago and another fresh cut or at least fresh sanded and put a drop of water on theme both.  The fresh one will flow out and the other will bead up as if you had put Simonize car wax on it..

The independently done article that got us thinking about this demonstrates this and I seem to remember they got bead up after only a couple of days after being cut.

Ohp hang on . . .  here's something :

http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-w...