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PostPosted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 8:31 pm 
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Brazilian Rosewood
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I don't know if all Yamahas are created equal but one Yamaha I fixed had one of those improperly glued bridge that looked as though it was pasted onto the wet finish with the dry finish still under the bridge, so the bridge didn't get fully bonded to the soundboard.

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PostPosted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:18 am 
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B. Howard wrote:
nyazzip wrote:
could this be an effect of sanding the bridge footprint too finely at glue up? not enough "tooth"?


Glue does not need an anchor. The best glue joints are done with a jointer which leaves a surface that is very smooth. It could have simply been a bit of dust on the surface when it was glued up.

Sure it does. Even jointed and sanded wood has open pores. Wood glue grips into those pores.

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PostPosted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 11:56 am 
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Brazilian Rosewood
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What Todd said.

AS I understand it, the strongest glue joints have between .002" and .008" of dried glue in them. 'Keying' just makes deeper scratches that end up being thicker glue lines than the optimum. Smooth, well fitted surfaces are what you need to keep the bond thickness in the right range.

I was told that the Forest Product Lab, in a study of wood aircraft structures back in WW II, found that surfaces that had been worked within 15 minutes of gluing ended up bonding better. That's the 'high surface energy' Todd mentioned: working the wood breaks chemical bonds, which take a while to re-form, and if you put glue on those open bond sites, you get a better joint.

The test for surface energy is to spray it with a mist of water. If it spreads out into a film the surface energy is high: the polar water molecules are attracted to the open bond sites. If the water forms droplets the energy is low. I tried that on a fossil mammoth ivory bridge. The stuff is notably hard to glue, and I suspected it might have naturally low surface energy, since most of the chemistry will have already happened. Sure enough, a surface even a few hours old caused the water to bead up, while it would spread out on a fresh surface. I gave the gluing surface a quick scrape just before spreading the HHG on it, and so ( about two years) far it's held.


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