Official Luthiers Forum!

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Do you unload the entire brush (or squeeze out a lot from a bottle) or just paint the surface? It is a difference, I hope I am making sense. I guess that in the first case you get better temperature conservation and lots more squeeze out. That too much squeeze out drives me nuts especially when gluing braces. At the moment I have far better control with fish glue; with hide I am always afraid I did not put enough.

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Build log

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I used to try to use just the "right amount" of HHG and try to keep squeeze out (SO) to a minimum. That resulted in wimpy beads of SO that seemed to be more difficult to remove than the more voluminous areas. More recently I have gone to laying down beads on the top such that I'm assured of a continuous and healthy bead around the bridge. This has resulted in a much easier process for me to remove SO.

Laying down beads on the warmed bridge seems to result in an uncontrollable amount of glue running off when I invert it to align, position and clamp. So I spread it out on the bridge first, lay down the beads on the top and then mate the surfaces. With the aid of the pins the whole process takes me less than 30 seconds. Once mated, I hold the construct together with hand pressure on top and through the soundhole until it self adheres (30-60 sec). Then I mechanically clamp.

10 to 15 minutes seems to be the best time for me to remove the SO beads. By that time, it has gelled sufficiently and has enough cohesive force so as to be removed entirely by pulling. If you can remove the whole SO this way then no tools or scraping is required to get a clean removal. As I stated before, sometimes I need to remove the clamps in order to get to all of the SO but it's only for a minute or less and I then re-clamp.

I've done 25 bridges (both new and repairs) with HHG and have never had a bridge release after as long as 9 years.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Alexandru, brilliant method with the tape and super glue!
Gonna try that on my next weiss fretboard glue up too.