I think i discovered something today. I’ve always felt like a really charred interior of a finger joint had a better chance of not adhering with glue, since it was essentially just a layer of loose dirty material. and cleaning inside of tiny finger joints is a nightmare.
Today my wife is making a box out of rosewood, which is a charry mess on the ends. while i was helping her peel masking, i looked over and saw my bin of salt for puzzle pieces (a @JBmanning5 puzzle trick).
So… I dumped that salt into a plastic container that could hold the long ends of the box and rubbed the finger joints through the salt (along with the flat edge) and voila, no char rubbed off on my fingers afterwards.
I have a Ziploc bag of salt on my desk for just such a purpose - I haven’t used it for joints since I haven’t found the glued ones to be any weaker - but I definitely have on a bunch of other things! Salt is lovely - and it doesn’t remove the charred look (which I like), just the extra stuff
My preference these days (well, for a long time now) is pool salt - 40 lb bags for $5-6. I probably use more salt than y’all though
The slightly larger grains work just as well, but leave less (very little) dust on the puzzle pieces. Regular table salt, which is like .40-.90 cents per lb works for charred edges just fine though. They look at you a little funny when you’re buying it by the case
