Wood Sanding Techniques: Sanding in Tight Places

One of the things you learn pretty quickly, as a woodworker, is that, if you have glue residue on a project, when you apply finish, the finish won't stick any place where there's glue, and it's just about enough to make you cry, if you find that out when you're applying finish. So, this is about, couple of different things. One is, how do I detect the glue, before finish goes on, if I find it, how do I get rid of it? So, first I'm going to take this mineral spirits, and I'm going to wipe it across this joint, and what that does, is it makes the wood look wet, and it makes glue spots stand out like a sore thumb. So, you can really see the gobs, there and there, much more easily than we could see them, before I put the mineral spirits on. So, I'm going to set that aside. Now, what do I do about it? I need to have a way to sand into that really, really tight spot. I have to get into that inside corner. If I hit that with a Random orbit sander, it's going to have a tendency to mess up one of the adjacent faces, no matter how I hold that sander. So, a detailed sander like this, is a great solution for this. With this triangular shaped pad, I can get into a really, really tight spot and work that glue away, from that inside corner. With variable speed on here, I can start with it down low, so that I can just, kind of see how it's going. I don't want to take off any material than I have to. Glue's pretty hard stuff, once it's dry, so I'm taking it off, but it's taking a while, so I'm going to speed her up a little bit. Well, looks pretty good to the naked eye, but let's give it the acid test, or the mineral spirits test. It's looking pretty good. Now, we have a nice crisp inside corner across here, where it's nothing but wood, no glue spots in there. So, two things out of this. Mineral spirits is a great way to test your work, before you finish your work, and a detailed sander like this one, is a great way to get into those tight corners and make sure you get all the glue residue out.