I think I royally screwed up yesterday - glue up issue

[sniper]

I started to glue up a headboard for the new bedframe yesterday evening. I got glue in the mortises on 1 leg and on the rail tenons and put it together. At that point, before putting glue on the other leg/tenons, I noticed I'd put the slot for the bed rails on the wrong side of the leg, so stopped the glue up. I pulled the rails out and wiped them off but decided I could just chisel out any glue blobs in the mortises.

Woke up this morning realizing that the now dried glue has been absorbed into the wood fibers in the mortises and tenons and when I go to glue them up, I'm afraid I won't get a good joint. Am I correct in thinking this and if so, does anyone have a suggestion on fixing this or am I just totally screwed? I used Titebond III which is water resistant and I'm afraid I'll do even more damage if I try soaking everything in water.


BTW, I cut the mortises for the bed rails the same as the footboard. The head/footboard mortises are not centered on the legs as I'm attaching a shutter assembly to the head/footboard rails facing the mattress on the headboard and away from the mattress on the footboard, hence the goof there. Since you really can't see the back of the headboard legs and everything is painted, I can get away with putting a filler strip in the mortises and painting it. Won't look great, but who's going to see it.

I hope this is clear. Thanks for the help/advice.

Steve

[fredhargis]

There's a handful of ways to fix it, and if it's only one joint joint I would clean the tenons down enough to get rid of the glue, and same with the mortise, chisel out enough wood to get down to some clean fibers. At this point the joint will be way too loose, so a gap filling glue like epoxy will handle that. The downside of this is you need to have the alignment squared away when you clamp it together since the joint will no longer align itself. They'll be several other suggestions, just check them all and choose the one you're comfortable with.

[McApple]

I would go ahead and reglue it, but use a drawbore to pin it tight.

[Curlycherry]

You put the dado on the wrong side of the leg? Geeze, what kind of mor.........oh wait, I just did that myself last night.

In my case I had the leg covered on two sides so I knew (or thought I did) for 100% certainty that I knew where the dado was supposed to go.

I would (and have) just scraped the tenons down with a chisel and the mortises, if it is at all possible load those back into whatever machine or tool you used to make them and then just rerun them. This is precisely why I never remove my pencil markings for mortises or tenons until after glue up. Seems as though I am good at putting the dado on the wrong side of pieces. The Leigh FMT is super easy to reload pieces and clean up both the mortise and tenons on. My chisel mortiser, which I don't use anymore is also good.

This is the reason I love Dominos so much. I can just let the glue dry, route out the mortise and boom, done. And, if I put a mortise for a Domino in the wrong place, I just shove one in the hole with glue on it, let it dry, and then later just route out a new mortise. Some of my projects have more dominos filling holes than they do holding the pieces together.

[Estrogen Hostage]

I would finish glue up with epoxy.

[BTH]

You could make the mortise bigger, glue in a "plug" and then re-mortise to the correct size.

[rwe2156]

Scrape off glue and use epoxy.

But truthfully, a bed frame is begging for pins!!

[petertay15]

For those who are suggesting epoxy: what kind do you mean? Putty that can be pressed into place, or the liquid that can be poured in. (The liquid kind becomes brittle doesn't it?(

[Splinter Puller]

Take a Dremel and score groves in the insides of the mortise and the surfaces of the tenon and re-glue and assemble. This will provide "tooth" to keep the new dried glue from slipping.

[fredhargis]

I just use liquid epoxy, usually the one hour hardening kind.