Your dry run told you the joints fit. Your pencil marks told you where the trouble was. Everything staged, everything rehearsed.
Now you do it with glue in the joint, and the only thing that changes is the clock.
Working time runs the show
PVA gives you somewhere between five and fifteen minutes from the moment glue touches wood. Hot, dry shop: five minutes, maybe less. Cool, humid shop: closer to fifteen. Cold shop below 55°F: PVA doesn't cure properly at all. You either heat the shop or switch adhesives.
Working time is the window in which the joints can still move. Open time, slightly longer, is how long the glue stays bondable after spreading. Clamping time is thirty to sixty minutes before you can handle the piece safely. Full cure on a load-bearing joint is twenty-four hours.
Everything in the glue-up is organized around that first number. Five to fifteen minutes. That's what you have.
Stage everything before the glue opens
Clamps pre-set to approximate width. Cauls cut, labeled, positioned. Water and a rag within arm's reach. The sequence you rehearsed in the dry run either written on a card or completely clear in your head.
This is not the time for a decision. Every decision got made before the glue opens. The dry run was the thinking. The glue-up is the doing.
If you're closing a complex case and can break it into sub-assemblies, do it. Glue two opposite frame pairs first, let them set for thirty minutes, then close the case between them. Two manageable glue-ups beat one frantic one where the first joints are skinning over while you're still driving the last ones home.
Application
Both surfaces. Even and thin. Not a glob on one side that you hope will spread when you press the joint closed. A consistent film across both mating faces. Brush, small roller, or a scrap of wood all work. What doesn't work is too much glue. Excess doesn't increase strength. It increases squeeze-out and panic.
End grain is the exception. End grain absorbs the first coat before it has a chance to bond, leaving the actual glue line dry. Double-coat it: brush on a thin first coat, let it tack for thirty seconds, then apply the second and assemble. This is the one situation where you deliberately slow down in the middle of a glue-up.
Clamps and cauls
PVA doesn't need high clamping pressure. It needs contact, not force. Tighten until the joint closes and you see squeeze-out along the full length of the glue line. That's your signal. Additional pressure past that point doesn't improve the bond and may distort the piece.
Cauls distribute pressure over wide surfaces and keep the force perpendicular to the joint. For edge-glued panels, cauls above and below prevent bowing. Cut them with a very slight crown so pressure reaches the center of the joint, not just the edges.
Dovetails: light clamping only. The geometry of the joint closes it. Too much pressure splits the tails.
Wet checks — thirty seconds, not optional
Do these before the glue skins over. You have about two minutes from clamping.
Run your finger along every show-face shoulder. If one is open, increase pressure at that joint or skew the clamp angle toward the gap.
Measure diagonals on any rectangular assembly. Equal means square. Unequal means racking. Skew the clamp line toward the long diagonal and re-measure.
Check that any floating panel still slides in its groove. If it's locked tight, you have a narrow window to open the clamp and fix it. Miss this, and the panel cracks when the wood moves seasonally.
Squeeze-out
Squeeze-out along the full glue line is good. It means the surfaces are in contact. Spotty squeeze-out means part of the joint is dry.
Two ways to handle it, both defensible.
Wet wipe: damp cloth, wipe immediately while the glue is fluid. Fast and effective. The trade-off is that you're introducing moisture next to the joint, which can raise grain and cause uneven absorption under a clear finish. In tight inside corners, the wipe may not fully reach.
Wait and chisel: let the squeeze-out turn rubbery, about twenty to thirty minutes, then lift it off with a sharp chisel. Slower, but cleaner on visible surfaces and inside corners.
For show-face joints under oil or natural finish, chisel it. The extra time is worth it. For painted or secondary surfaces, wet wipe is fine.
Don't skip inside corners either way. They will show.
Then stop
After the wet checks and squeeze-out, stop touching it. Clamps stay on. The piece doesn't move, doesn't get carried somewhere better, doesn't get nudged. Whatever alignment you got in those two minutes is the alignment you have.
Thirty minutes minimum in clamps at room temperature. An hour for a complex case. Twenty-four hours before you load the joint.
If you found yourself rushing the wet checks or skipping the diagonals, note it. Either the assembly was too complex for one glue-up, the shop was warmer than you planned for, or you needed one more sub-assembly stage. The dry run exists so the glue-up isn't where you learn that lesson.