Yellow glue lifetime

If it turns out not to be so easy, break down and buy a new "small bottle"! ; ) Or, seek out empty generic squeeze bottles.

Gummy

whit3rd snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:58a9d665-b837-41d9-8e9d- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

IIRC, liquid yellow glue is soluable in water. The bits that have dried to the insides of the bottle might not come out, though.

I would probably "fail fast" here. If things don't look promising after a few minutes of work, just toss the whole thing in the trash and spend $2.19.

If you want cheaper, look for Elmer's "school glue" at Walmart. It's $.25 to $1 (depends on the time of year you buy) and holds plenty of glue for most woodworking projects.

Puckdropper

When recaning pressed in cane, cleaning the groove is done by wetting the old glue (in the groove) with warm vinegar water. Allow it to "soak" for as long as the wetness stays prevalent. Scrape the groove to remove what has loosened, then re-wetting and repeat the scraping/cleaning process. The old glue is dry, so it doesn't matter its condition. The vinegar water seems to soften the hardened, cured glue. I would think warm (or hotter) vinegar water would help clean your bottle more efficiently than just water.

Sonny

So, many of these type glues will change to a solid state after sitting for some time. You might try banging/jarring the bottle against a work bench a few times and see if the glue goes back to a liquid.

Most of the glue came out with water (soapy water, to keep the chunks from glomming onto the bottle sides), but that left a bit of gummy residue. This and other PVA adhesives are supposedly water-soluble, but there's other material in this one, that didn't come off. The gummy stuff resisted water, vinegar, ultrasound... and oily-solvent emulsions (water and waterless hand cleaner making a milky suspension) with paint thinner, mineral oil, citrus-glue-gone, acetone. A few tablespoons of isopropanol, though, and a few hours of soak time, and it's clean.

Sodium hydroxide (lye)

Yeah, that was next on my list; the hydroxyl of the alcohol might just have inhibited the bonding of the residues to the bottle, and lye would have been as good at that task. But, the gum's gone now.

I've found it also works well on epoxies and such