Official Luthiers Forum!

Since the issue of adhesives comes up so often I thought I'd post a link to an interesting article on Period Glue That goes into a bit of the history of animal glues (protein and collagen). As a professional woodworker the issue of adhesives has always been a passionate subject for me, as it determines the life or death of a piece of furniture, or a musical instrument, over time in conjunction with quality jointing techniques. This fellow also manufactures a liquid hide glue called Old Brown Glue (not to be confused with TiteBond or Franklin Liquid Hide Glues) that I plan to do some considerable testing on. It is supposedly an old trick of the trade that furniture and cabinet makers used in the 18th century for a longer open time during glue-up. I also plan to build a test instrument with it unless Al Carruth or someone else has already done so. Anyway, I thought there may be some folks interested in the article.

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Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

good info, thanks! Open time with hide glue has always been my issue with using it...probably a practice and patience thing.

-Matthew

Test it very carefully. I have used it for marquetry, but I would not use it for anything structural. It remains very flexible, after drying. Much like rubber. Just for fun, my results, when I let HHG, LMI White, OBG, and Fish Glue dry in a container, were:

Fish Glue was, without comparison the most hard and brittle. Broke up like glass no flex.

LMI White came in second on hard and brittle.

HHG was a close third to LMI White in flexibility. You could bend the thin shell of HHG, but it would break after reaching a certain point. It broke with a snap, though, like the fish glue, it just remained more flexible.

OBG remained flexible, and is, after weeks of drying, still flexible. You can bend it double, and wad it up in a ball. It never breaks. You can pull it apart, and it stretches before it breaks. I would think it might be nice for purflings and binding glue ups with the flexibility, but that might also be bad.

One other thing I noticed is that they are all equally hygroscopic. Well, to the point, that, if you wet your finger and touch the surface, they all become tacky again, immediately.

It was a test I did because I left some OBG in a little plastic container, so I could brush it on. It dried, and a lot stayed up on the sides of the container, but was very thin there. I was able to remove it from the container and bend it around. I then tried the same with the other glues, because I was surprised at the flexibility of the OBG.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Waddy,

Thanks for that! Rubbery may be good on bindings but it makes me a bit nervous regarding structural joinery at least on thin woods. I may still pull a Padma and build something wild with it just for the heck of it to see what happens over time. Tonally, I don't think it would fair well though because the OBG would likely dampen it too much like rubber cement I would think.

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Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

I agree that fish is the toughest nastiest stuff around.

Funny thing is just a couple hours ago I was reading the site of a luthier who was using old brown for everything on his guitars and reckoned it's great stuff for "vibration transmittal", since it is related to hide glue.

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Build log

One thing I remembered that I should note here is that TiteBond Regular, in some of my testing, tends to dry and remain pliable when dried on the surface of a piece of wood or on a paper or plastic cup. It can be stretched a bit before snapping and can be folded without breaking. As it is left to age for some time though (several months in this test) it becomes a bit more brittle but still has some pliability in comparison to the collagen glues. HHG and Fish Glue both harden and crystallize over time making them much more suited for good transference of tonal vibrations I would think. That thought is supported by a majority of master luthiers around the world. I'm determined to do some serious testing with the OBG just for the curiosity of it. It's one of the few adhesives I haven't put to the test yet. Worse comes to worse, I can always use it up on the new Cherry cabinets I'm going to build when I remodel our kitchen.

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Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

I think OBG is head n shoulders above Titebond Liquid Hide Glue, as the Titebond has all kind of preservatives in it, in addition to the urea. OBG is HHG and Urea, only. No other additives, and it gels below 72*f. It is very nice to use for bindings, but takes forever to dry. 24 hours recommended.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

You can add glycerine to HHG to make it more flexible. Adding more will increase the flexibility. This is a very old trick back when HHG was the standard. The idea was to make a more flexible glue for joints like chair rungs,where flexing would crack the glue line.

Glycerine also attracts water. I do not think I want to use flexible glue in sound transmitting joints. Just my opinion.