Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello friends
hope all of u had good merry christmas
till today all my guitars were built using synthetic glues like tite bond or others available in india.
this time for my new classical guitar i want to use the hide glue.
i dont know what is hide glue strength and what strength of hide glue should be used for guitar making
are they strong enough to use for glueing steel string bridges?
waiting for ur replies

Hide glue is more than strong enough, you can build with confidence. Plenty of steel strings out there with hide glue.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

When saying Hide glue, do you mean Hot hide glue that you mix yourself or do you mean this premixed stuff from Titebond.

As said, Hot Hide Glue (HHG) is more than strong enough, but you have to learn how to use it. Its not difficult, basically You have to mix, heat and control how thick it is. Also you have to learn its gell time.

On a guitar you mostly use a pretty thick, (like olive oil) mix and when gluing something like a bridge, its a good idea to slightly preheat the bridge because it gives you a longer working time.
I´m sure others will follow with more tricks.

I will not advice you to use the premixed, bottled stuff. Then you´ll be better off with Titebond 1, which is a very nice glue.

I myself, on guitars, use Titebond on most big gluing surfaces and HHG on what is related to the soundboard. Especially with the tentellones and the braces its a very good idea to use HHG. I´ve made Classicals and flamencos with HHG only, but I hate gluing the back and the binding/purflings with HHG. On things like making the neck/heel, I so no advantage in using HHG and therefor I use Titebond 1

Finally, I must admit that I cant really hear the difference in my work when making a HHG only or a Titebond only guitar, but HHG has some advantages for some purposes.

Rahoul, use the 192g hide glue. It is plenty strong enough for steel string or classical, and the higher you go in gram strength, the shorter the open time you have before the glue starts to gel. Warm your work pieces with a heat gun, heat bulbs, or any other method that won't scorch the wood to extend the open time of hide glue before geling starts to take place. Also, make sure your joinery is good and tight, as hide glue won't fill in any slop in your joints like "tite bond" or some others.

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Brad

Friends thanks for ur replies
yes i want to make my own hide glue
does the lower gram strength have more time to gel and
is its strength similar to higher gram strength?

also i saw in internet that we can keep the remaining hard gel into fridge and reuse it
how many times we can reuse this type of glue?

As been said, 192 gram strength is strong enough and will give you more open time before it gels. I use higher strength (250? - just because it's what was easier to find around here) and it has considerable less open time.
I have some hide glue in the freezer for maybe 9 months and, as an experiment, I tried on scrap and it worked fine and did not smell "funny" - didn't use it on guitars and wouldn't use it as it's easy enough to make new batches. I was instructed to use cold water (around 1,8 - 2 times the glue weight) and leave it to soak it for a couple of hours before warming the stuff, and that's how I do it.

Good luck!

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I've used 160g and it was fine and I've not seen any failures. I've been using 192g for about 10 or 11 years now, and there was a noticeable loss of 'open time' when I first switched, but it is still very useable. I wouldn't recommend higher than 192g simply because there's no reason to.

The "gram strength" doesn't relate directly to the glued joint's strength; it's, more or less, simply a reflection of the gelled glue's viscosity.

You can refrigerate and reheat it for roughly a week. You can also cut the gel into small chunks and freeze them for many months. For bridges(my steel string bridges are less than an inch wide, and all are strung with medium gauge strings) I always make a small, fresh batch, just to be sure I'm using the strongest glue possible.

If you don't have a scale to weigh the glue or water, just pour some glue in a cup, fill it with cold water just to the top of the glue and let is sit a few hours, heat it to 145 degrees F, you're good to go. Clinton

Todd, does the extra gram strength for bridges really offer an advantage. By that I mean, isn’t 192 more than strong enough for the task.?.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Thanks friends for ur consultations
can we use less than 100 gm strength
where can be used i.e for back . tops and fretboards?

the lowest gramstrength i came across until now with hide glue was 150 bloomgrams (Tanex K-2). IIRC the bone glue i have is 100-120.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Dont use cheapo glue... Its not worth it... If you cant get good quality HHG, use Titebond. Its not that important.

I´m in Europe, and we dont have this gram-strength thing, so I buy the best quality HHG made for violin making.

Tanex is european too (Czech republic) - and good quality it is. The gram strength is, broadly speaking, a measure of the strength of a gel (it´s actually a well defined test devised by a guy named Bloom and relates to the mass necessary for a probe of a certain dimension to enter 4mm into a gel of predetermined concentration) and is related to the viscosity and open-time of the glue. All hide glue has a particular gram-strength, even if it´s not always stated. Sorry if you already knew all this. May i ask where you buy your hide glue?

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Like HHG and Fish Glue.
I am a fan of the 192 also. It is worth the effort to learn to use this stuff.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it