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I was about to post on the fish glue thread but something seems to have gone sideways, and I actually was hoping to ask some questions, since I'm an avid fish glue user. If there is an issue discussing a product on the forum, please someone let me know. I'm new here, and while I read the OLF rules, I'm not sure I understand how and why threads get locked - not questioning that, just saying some guidance if I step out of line would help .


Hi John, I've heard a lot about your gatherings and Blues Creek Guitars. Very thankful to find that you are here! I've heard of LaPlante and seen some of his classical guitar work. He's a pretty accomplished classical builder. Does he frequent the OLF as well? I've not seen any posts from him since I joined.

I was curious about the search capability here, after a few references on the prior thread - wow I didn't know there was so much material going so far back! So I found a bunch of posts from this guy, Joshua French. I don't know that name, but it seems like he might build classicals? Maybe there is a connection to LaPlante? Is Joshua an amateur builder? Anyway, he speaks about fish glue on the OLF quite a bit - in February 2005 Joshua says he predominantly uses hide and fish glue, and in March 2005 he says, "Most things that need any strength or affect the sound I use fish glue for." ... so he's definitely reporting using it for structural uses as well. Joshua even mentions vacuum clamping with fish glue. Those guitars have been out there for a decade - that would be good feedback, to know how they are doing. There is all kinds of discussion about fish glue by folks throughout 2005 on the OLF.

I find all of this very interesting, since I use fish glue extensively. John I've seen a few of your guitars, and well, Blues Creek Guitars reputation is impeccable and well known. I know you've been doing this a while and saw that you also sell fish glue. Would you be willing to share more about your experience? I know you have a fair bit of guitars in the wild, and I know they end up all over the planet. I'd like to continue using this product. To date I've had no issues, but some of the cautions I see being posted have me a wee bit concerned. I know you have a lot of experience, and I would be imminently thankful to whatever you're willing to share around its use.

Andy

The product has been around a long time , and I mean thousands of years. Like Hide it is a protein glue. I have not seen or experienced any of the issues people are saying and many of the people I know that use it have not .
David LaPlante used to come here ( OLF ) . Not sure when he has posted last. Todd Stock and He were the 2 most influential to get me to try this. Like many I heard all these horror stories but when I probed the people further it was always, well I heard from someone. I do know as most glues there is a shelf life and like anyone , if the glue is old get fresh . Wayne Henderson is also using it now.
My learning curve is when I was playing with it so see what it can and can't do. It does take a bit more to take apart but does come out fairly well but you need moisture and heat. I also know it take a good bit of clamp time as compared to white and yellow glue. I allow 12 hr. I also put glue on both surfaces for bridges.
I also don't over clamp. It cleans up well with warm water. I also will heat it for wicking into cracks. As you heat it , it gets thinner and flows well. You do have to make sure you have clean well mated joints.
It will tack well and you do have a good open time unlike HHG.
When I heard someone here complain about fish glue leaching into end grain . I tried to replicate that and never got it to do that.

This glue can go bad so again always to a test joint to be sure it is still viable.



There are more than one way to do any one thing so find what works for you.

_________________
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

Thank you, John. I really appreciate your willing to take the time to share your expertise and knowledge.

I've been reading the forum archives and it is full of discussion on fish glue. There was a guy making lutes - Colin from England - using fish glue. Barry Dudley, a violin maker, said "I use hot hide glue when I build a violin and either for a guitar. I have also used "fish glue" It's terrific and has a history in the pipe organ business. It doesn't creep when you clamp up as bad as titebond."

A bit more research and I found some thing interesting, at least to address concerns about my use of the glue. All the majors seem to sell it now - LMI, Stew Mac, Blues Creek - if these folks are selling to professional luthiers, I'm probably in safe hands using it.

Taylor Guitars - who probably does about as much R&D as any guitar maker out there, is using it as part of its Advanced Performance Designs, from their web site, "Andy Powers chose fish protein glue for the top and back bracing because the braces provide an energy transmission network for the top and back of the guitar and the fish glue optimizes the tonal transfer. Its strong adhesion properties also allow the guitar to be built more lightly without sacrificing strength." Andy is their master luthier ... I bet he knows just a little bit more than I do about making guitars!

Thanks again, John, really appreciate your feedback! If anyone else has experience or technical information to share (like shelf life experience), please let us know. I've found the product to work well with years of shelf life, but shelf life seems to be a question out there?

Andy

I can't speak for others, but I've invested a great deal of time in studying adhesives as well as observing them under a broad range of conditions in the field, and here is what I can say about fish glue.

It's been around for a long time, was commonly available from LePage decades ago, though I don't know if they've had it available for some time. Its most common applications were for things like metal to wood bonds (like brand or name plates), and plasticized for book bindings. I first heard of it in the early 2000's when I was sharing a shop with a harpsichord maker. His research on early Italian harpsichords showed a curious amount of fish glue (not isinglass) in the purchase records of Bartolomeo Cristofori in the late 17th century.

I began experimenting with Norland high tack fish glue around this time, and swore by it, thought it was everything hide glue was, but with sinfully long open time. The earliest mention I could find from my experience was in January of 06, a month after I joined here, and I was singing it's praises like it was the best thing since sliced bread. I had only been using it a few years at that point however, and in hindsight I have to say I may have been a bit premature in my confidence of its strengths.

If interested, here is how it works. I believe there are 20 amino acids which make up collagen glues like hide or fish, and they are quite similar between the two. Two in particular - proline and hydroxyproline - are large complex amino acids, which while not the most important for adhesion and hydrogen bonds, are primarily responsible for determining the gel temperature. This is great, same factors for bonding, just a different gel temp, right?

Not so quick, because this ignores the issue of state of denaturation. There are several states, primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, which describe dry, coiled (gel), uncoiled (liquid), and finally a point of no return where proteins are broken down or cross linked in a way which prevents them from returning to a lower state. I'm pulling all this from memory, so forgive me for not recalling which term describes which state, but I know there are some articles on collagen and albumin if you're interested.

Hot hide glue when curing goes from the uncoiled liquid state, then an intermediate state of coiled and gelled, before settling and forming full bonds in its dry state. Fish glue skips this step and goes straight from uncoiled to dry. What this does is leave fish glue slightly more susceptible to release at a lower threshold of moisture than hide glue. There are ways to mitigate this, and I've worked with things like treating with aluminum sulfate to increase moisture resistance, made some of my own concoctions from raw fish collagens with various additives for moisture issues, tackifiers, antimicrobials, etc, (helps to have some organic chemist friends), but eventually gave up on trying to improve it.

Now it's not a fatal flaw for all applications, and I still use fish glue quite a bit. I use it for repairing loose braces which were originally assembled with hide glue (collagen compatibility is nice), and some lower stress joints where a longer working time is helpful. Even on bridges I glued with fish glue over the years, very few of them failed (we do a lot of bridge reglues, which gives a nice sampling size). Some did however, and even though a small percentage of overall, it was nonetheless a higher rate than with hide glue, for which I never see premature failure save for the most extreme of abusive circumstances.

Fish glue does have great heat resistance. In some controlled tests I've done it beat out liquid hide glue, System 3, West System, T-88, several PVA / aliphatics, and came in very close to traditional hot hide glue. It also doesn't cold creep, and dries very hard (what effect that may have on things like tone is another area for debate entirely). All in all it's a great glue. For high stress joints such as the bridge however, even though it may work fine under most conditions, in real world observations I find it to be less tolerant to high humidity than hide glue.

Plus it requires a longer clamping time, and there's really no need for such a long open time on a bridge joint. In hindsight I think I was a bit too giddy over this newly discovered miracle glue, and used it where there was no real need. On the upside, at least my overzealous applications offered me opportunity to find its weaknesses and test its limits (at the expense of having to do a few warranty bridge reglues on our dime).

As to shelf life, I believe I saw mention of particulates settling out over time when left out at room temperature. This certainly happens and I've seen that, but there are some other clues I find to watch for before it reaches this point. When refrigerated and kept in gel state it can last many years, but when the collagens are in the liquid state it is actually constantly, albeit very slowly denaturing further. When the proteins are loose and uncoiled, they will slowly but inevitably break down over time. Anyone familiar with fish glue will know the crazy stringiness it has, how you can have silky threads floating around as you work it, like standing around a cotton candy machine. As it denatures further, and the protein strands break down, you'll notice this stringiness start to lessen. When this change starts to be noticed, we pitch it and order a new bucket.

So again, great glue, I still use it for some applications, but it does have a lower tolerance for high humidity under stress than traditional hot hide glue does.

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Interesting on the bridge reglue
May I ask if you applied glue to both surfaces?
What was your clamping time

I for the bridge HHG is fine as it isn't like placing a top or back.

your information David was helpful.

_________________
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

I've been loving fish glue for bridges because it tacks so well I never have to worry about it slipping while clamping and I work really slow. I don't like the stress of having to get everything right perfect with hide glue. So needless to say I am concerned since I probably have 100 guitar bridge reglue's or handmade guitars out there with bridges glued with fish glue.

So the question is... If it's known that fish glue fails under high humidity then what does the guitar have to be subjected to before it fails? After all guitars are not canoe paddles and anyone who leaves their guitar outside the tent at the camp ground and it gets rained on is to be blamed, not the fish glue right?

So at what point does it become unreasonable or at what point does the trade off of user responsibility trump the choice of glue.

I understand that like software programmers we should engineer for the stupid things that people do but at the same time people are buying hand made instruments and ought not leave them out in the rain.

Of course this is all bunk if some one has actually tested and found that Fish glue bridge joints fail at 60% humidity or something like that.

I would rather know the gluing techniques used. I have had a hard time getting a bridge plate to come off that was glued on with fish glue. That was soaked over night then heat applied.
If a guitar was placed in a car trunk on a hot sunny say. Any glue would be stressed. I have had my guitars at shows where RH was 60% for 2 days. The guitars showed signs of high humidity but nothing failed and all returned to normal.

_________________
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

Regarding gluing techniques, it's been a few years so I can't say for sure, but wetting both surfaces has long been a practice I've used, and likely did here. For clamping time, I always left fish glue bridges clamped overnight.

I don't want to make it sound like it a majority of these bridge joints failed - I'm guessing something more like the 3-5% range (totally guessing, as I've never tracked these jobs in a way I could pull any solid metrics from). The failures I did see were probably neglected or abused, and even then tended to last at least a few years. Touring musicians, basement storage, one I recall was kept in a log cabin by a river. Under normal circumstances and proper care, most seem to hold just fine. Under less than ideal conditions though, the failure rate was certainly higher than I see with hot hide glue.

As to testing for specific limits, that's a real tough one. It's hard to make lab tests accurate to real world conditions. Testing to immediate failure, whether by heat, humidity, or brute force, does not always fairly account for cyclical changes, and perhaps most importantly, time.

I've always wanted to set up a controlled environmental chamber, where I could place several samples reflecting real guitar applications - dense tropical hardwood glued cross grain to soft soundboard with load to simulate a bridge joint, resinous rosewood to maple under a flex load for a neck, etc. program the chamber to cycle 3 days 75%RH, 3 days 30%, over and over. Repeat at different temperatures with different loads - I'm confident that failures under repeat cyclical stresses short of abrupt forced failure would show results from strain and fatigue which differed from immediate forced rupture.

Alas, it's another controlled test that would be a very time consuming pet project with no direct return on the horizon, so I'm hoping someone else will pick this up first. . Short of that, I have to go by experience which is a bit less ideally controlled, and perhaps even a bit contaminated by anecdotal evidence. So far my experience just points me to feel that although fish glue is a very good glue, hide glue is a bit more able to endure when conditions are pushed.

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Just an afterthought - I should note that I quit building guitars over 15 years ago, so obviously I have never done any full new construction with fish glue. My experience with it is limited to repair work, and the failures I've witnessed even more specifically focused on bridge joints.

I still use it on bracing, binding, and several other jobs where it seems to have stood up quite well over time. I still feel it's a fantastic glue, with excellent heat resistance and creep resistance similar to hot hide glue, and the vast majority of the bridge joints I've used it in indeed have survived the last 8-12 years quite perfectly. It's just a small percentage that have failed under probably less than ideal conditions, but nevertheless at a rate higher than I've witnessed with hide glue under similar circumstances. Given that a well prepared bridge clamping arrangement does not require much open time, I no longer use it for this application.

Just wanted to make clear I'm not trying to paint it as a bad thing, only that it's not my first choice for bridge joints.

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As a side note (great info here) I've not seen locked threads here. This is a very lightly moderated forum that relies on the good will of the membership.

Edit: I stand corrected. I saw the post. Very rare. I guess there is a point being made there.

David I want to thank you for posting so informatively. I followed up from the original fish glue thread as, after Hesh posted your story on fish glue, I was rather alarmed about my existing instruments - both repair and new construction. I want to thank you for your very grounded and well-reasoned responses, and for clearing my concern. I'm glad to hear you think fish is good glue and, in fact, issues are possible under more extreme circumstances, in few cases, and specific to bridge patch (which tends to be the worst of the guitar joints). I am far more at ease. Whew! Thanks again.

Andy

I've been following These Fish glue threads with interest. I don't have anything to add, other than my own personal experience. I've used fish glue now for about 8 years and use it for many structural parts of the guitar. I've probably built 80-90 instruments with it to date and have no failures. Always interested to read others experiences with it.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

I have used fish glue for building guitars and mandolin for about 15 years. After I first learned about it, I used it almost exclusively, as it is about as easy to use as PVA glues which I was using prior to that, but without what I thought would be the 'hassle' of hide glue. Soon after learned how to use hide glue however, and I found that for my style of building it did have a few benefits, such as shorter cure time, easier clean up. In many instances, the shorter open time is also a good thing. Then there is the bragging factor in sales, lets be honest.

These days I still use fish glue for a few operations in new instrument builds, such as bindings, top/side, back/side joints, neck laminates, where the extra open time comes in handy. Its probably my favourite glue for repairs, which also sometimes require more time than hide glue allows, without rushing. I have seen it pull into end grain of spruce and discolor the surrounding wood a couple of times, so these days I seal end grain with shellac if I plan to use it for bindings, pruflings or the rosette.

At any rate, I have not had any failures where I can say for sure the glue was to blame. This place (Norway) is hell for guitars, with really dry winters and humid summers, and many of my instruments are heavily (ab)used, and look the part. The glue joints seem to hold up well, though. I could probably skip fish glue altogether without too much trouble, but based on my experience I see no reason.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

One not also when I glue a bridge on with fish glue I clamp for at least 12 hr. If I can I let it set 24hr and then let it set another 24. When using torrified wood I do allow this for everything as the treated wood won't absorb moisture like raw wood.
Thanks for all the info. This is a great discussion.

_________________
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

So fish glue doesn't need wood to wood contact? It will stick to a coat of shellac just fine? I was surprised to read that it was used for metal to wood bonding so I guess the answer would be yes. But I would also guess that it would not be recommended, in order to avoid discoloration, to shellac the center seams of a spruce top and then bond with fish glue am I correct?

I'm interested in it's high heat capabilities because I like to first join a top then bend the pliage into it over a hot pipe for Selmer guitars. This has worked ok with Titebond so far but I like the idea of something with more heat resistance.

I've never been able to cause spruce staining with fish glue. I don't doubt others experience, I just don't know what causes the issue (repeatability seems absent the experience). Fish glue is an emulsion-based glue and those works best with porous materials. For structural joints I would want that strength, and would probably not want to glue structural over shellac but straight wood-on-wood. Glues almost universally have poor shearing properties. This is why we see so many cheap guitars (poly top with bridge glued on touching almost no wood and gap-filled with glue) in for bridge re-glues, which are frequently a mess to fix.

John I'm interested in your use of fish for bridges. I have been using 315g HHG - maybe overkill but bridge lifts are something that I don't believe I've completely understood. I've seen 50 year old instruments lift original bridges ... probably a humidity swing? Anyway I've ended up on 315g for now. I like fish with a 24hr clamp up as an alternative - interesting to hear that's working well for you.

Thanks for everyone sharing their experiences - it really helps to have the broader set of experience when considering what I'm doing and seeing.

Andy

It sticks to shellac just fine, yes. At least sufficiently for bindings and rosettes IME, which are not particularly stressed joints. I would not use fish glue for a soundboard center joint in the first place, but if I did, I see no reason to seal the edges. They are all sidegrain, which don't have the capillary characteristics of end grain. Plus I would worry that the glue line would be visible. Can't beat a freshly planed joint and HHG for this joint for a 'normal' sound board. The heat resistance should also be about as good as fish glue, so that would be my choice for a Selmer style guitar with a heat bent pliage too.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

As I said in the previous post, the few times I've seen it, the stains seem to come from glue seeping into the end grain, likely by capillary action. Perhaps the water based fish glue will pick up some color from the surrounding wood, some rosewoods sure like to bleed when you apply water. OTOH, other than the slow cure time of fish glue I'm not sure why it would be different than other water based glues in this regard. The stains I have seen have been very small, perhaps 1 mm or so in from the glue line, and along a very short distance, but still visible. Anwyays, a little shellac will cure it, so not a big issue.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Sorry Arnt, I missed your comment. I agree a little dewaxed shellac goes a long way to prevent where there is concern for color bleed from adjacent woods. Glad you followed up. I'll keep an eye on bleeds.

Thanks, Andy

I use fish glue for setting rosettes in the channel. When I do it, I use a 50/50 mix of fish glue and water. This allows the glue to wick into the rosette. I install the rosette, fully, then soak with fish glue and work it into the rosette surface. I noticed the wicking into the end grain of the Spruce the first time I did it. It was significant, and even showed through the finish a little. Now I seal with shellac, but only in the end grain at the top and bottom of the rosette. The wicking is surely enhanced by the diluted glue. I have heard that you can also seal with full strength fish glue by brushing the end grain lightly with it and letting it dry before installing the rosette. I do the shellac because it dries fast.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I've never used fish glue, relying on original titebond for virtually everything. I can tell that people generally WANT fish glue to work well, even if there is some argument as to whether it does.

Without ignighting a second war of the roses, can someone tell me what the perceived advantages to fish glue are?


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Working time.

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You mean it stays open longer than PVA?


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No, but longer than hide glue, but retaining hide glue benefits of creep resistance, heat resistance, and serviceability, where PVA is seen as a bit lacking.

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Thanks for that!


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