Veneering over old hide glue residue?

[marinosr]

I have a chest of drawers, pictures below, that I picked up for $50 a while back. It's a cool old handmade piece, hand joinery, plane tracks on no-show surfaces, etc.

It has nice veneer on the drawer fronts, but at some point somebody ripped off the veneer from the main body. The "finish" on that part of the chest seems to be old hide glue residue and 100 years of accumulated grime and Pledge residue. It actually looks pretty decent in an unfakeable antique patina sort of way. But I'd like to try and put some new veneer on, at least on the top. I really don't want to sand everything down to bare wood though. So my question is this: If I clean the surface and give it a light scuff sanding, can I hammer veneer right on top of the old glue and have it adhere well?

z

 

[jlimey]

If you are going to clean and scuff sand it, I would put that time into running a hand scraper over the surface. By then, there will probably be very little glue residue left (unless the cleaning/sanding time was planned to be very short). I would just scrape off the remainder, but you could try putting a little hide glue over a small section of the surface. Does the old residue dissolve or is the surface still bumpy? If the latter, I would say that you wouldn't want to veneer over it.

 

[Hmerkle]

Somebody photobombed you! LOL

 

[mdbuntyn]

I've heard (read mostly) furniture restorers say that you can put new hide glue over old hide without issue.

 

[striker]

should be able to reconstitute hide glue with heat and moisture. Maybe try a small area with hot, moist rag.