After J.J.'s dropped box last week I sent him a little glue syringe kit
without any instructions, and figured it would be best to post it here for
all. It's really quite simple and I did't bother doing a detailed pictorial on
how to make one (partly because there are so many different ways you
could make one).
For hard to reach places I use a butterfly needle, a syringe and an
alligator clip soldered to a piece of 10 guage copper wire. The syringes
can typically be found at your local pharmacy for about a quarter a piece,
but the butterfly needles can be a little harder to find. Hospitals will have
them, but not generally stocked for sale at the pharmacy so you may have
to know someone who can get them for you.
The needles I use are very small (I'm guessing 18ga?) and it can be very
hard to push even a relatively low viscosity glue through them. I use a
small clamping system for the syringe to help force the glue through.
I've been wanting to make a new one for some time and figured this a
good excuse to do it. Here's the raw materials for mine - syringe, needle,
clamp and some scrap aluminum.
Here is everything cut and assembled. A hole drilled in the aluminum to
run the syringe through, and a slot cut to clamp the clamp in place.
There are endless other small machines you could make to do this same
job, so feel fre to use your imagination. Here's the one I've been using for
the past few years.
Here's a shot of it with the alligator clip extra hand.
The nice thing about the fine needle is that the output is so slow that I
can squeeze the clamp a few times to put pressure on the syringe and
have a solid 2-3 minutes of glue flowing. It comes out slow enough that I
don't have to stop the glue to reposition it. I can simply watch it and
move it very slowly as I apply a slow steady bead. This certainly wouldn't
work with hide glue unfortunately. Even if you had a heated tube and
needle it generally takes too long to apply. I keep mine filled with fish
glue and since I use it so regularly I just leave it in a jar of water by the
sink. If you weren't going to use it that often you would have to make
sure the syringe is rinsed throroughly before storing, or just store it in a
small jar of bleach water.
I had wanted to do a more complete tutorial for you J.J., but I've been so
busy these last few weeks I just haven't had the time. I had even prepared
a demo guitar to show how I would go about it.
Before
And after careful calculations to approximate the velocity and angle of
impact to accurately replicate your fracture...
Actually I just dropped it on a concrete floor from about four feet.
If you haven't gotten to the repair by next week I may have some time
then to do a brief photo essay, but don't wait on it just for me.
