As a point of interest to users of any of the wood glues mentioned below. All are water soluable(?). My point being that in past years, wherever I have worked in the woodworking industry, wiping wood glue down with a damp rag was forbidden. It stands to reason that if you get a water soluable substance wet it will thin and therefore absorb more readily into the material it is being used on. If you are wiping down Titebond with a damp rag, you are pushing it into the pores of the wood and since it is thinner, it goes deeper. Therefore, the stains. My best results were to either let it gel and peel it off, or wait till it firms up and scrape it off. Since the runs and beads will set up in just a few minutes, I just wait and peel it off, or use a dull chizel and scrape it off wet. The dull chizel won't dig into the wood.

Another thought on wiping wood down with a damp cloth: Water, on some woods, has a tendancy to open the pores of the wood, soften the grain, and when you go back and stain or finish, you can find some difference in coloration where the stain or finish soaks into the open grain more than the other. Not so much with hardwoods, but usually with soft woods. You can take a piece of pine or cedar and wet half of it, let it dry and stain the whole piece and it will show what I'm talking about. So, if you wipe an area with a damp cloth to remove glue, you could either be setting the glue deep into the wood, or opening the grain in that area thus causeing the color variation. Check it out!!

Rehd