Hide glue worries

[John W]

Y'all have convinced me to try using hide glue for my first CBG. (Mainly from reading this thread: http://www.cigarboxnation.com/group/secretsofthecbgunderground/foru... ) I'm even using unflavored gelatin instead of real hide glue, even though the entire rest of the internet says it will never work.

But I'm worried about the working window. Do I have enough time to get the glue on both box slots and both spots on the neck, and get it placed in the box in time? I'm sure I can use it to glue down the lid of the box to the neck no problem. It's the fiddly placing the neck in the right spot after gluing 4 surfaces that I'm worried about.

Just how much time do I have with it anyhow? Seconds? Half a minute?

[Doc Oakroot]

The only hide glue I use is Titebond liquid hide glue (liquid at room temp -Very convenient). I never seem to have problems with time, but I think half a minute is about as long as I would normally go. But with hide glue, you just heat and wet it and start over if you need to.

[John W]

Well, I'm winging it and it seems to be working. I got the bridge shim glued in okay I think. After some thinking and plotting I think I can get the neck in and box lid on in 30 seconds and I'm frantically wiring up my electronics while I still have the momentum -- I might be able to finish this thing tonight!

I figure the worst case is I somehow glue the wrong thing to something or other and the box cracks... I'll just get another box (although I'm partial to this one.)

[John W]

Yeah, I have a great setup for the gelatin glue. It's a huge pot with a metal strainer thingie -- lots of thermal mass when it's filled with water. Takes 5 minutes or more to go from 150 degrees to 140 degrees once I turn off the heat, and it takes about 3 or 4 minutes to heat from 140 to 150. I took some pictures and can upload them when I get them off my camera.

I was pretty skeptical of my bridge shim I made at first, but it seems to have hardened like a rock.

Everything was going great but I had two setbacks: one, my insulated wire for my pickup turned out to be insulated with aluminum, so I couldn't solder to it, and two, I had to tend to the 2 1/2 year old and left my "glue pot" on too long and the temp went up to 180. Ooops, guess I won't be done tonight and I'll have to make a trip tomorrow to the store for more gelatin since I used up the last packet. Oh well it gives me some time to work out how I'm going to shield this thing. I have a huge amount of scrap copper foil so it's just a matter of finding the right scraps and using them most effectively.

[John W]

Here is my setup: http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/photo/show?id=2592684%3APhoto%3...

One thing I didn't learn until after I had already made several glue joints and finished the guitar is that my original plan was somewhat flawed. I was taking the temp of the water, not the glue, so my glue was 10-20 degrees too cool. The guitar is still in clamps until this evening so we'll see if that adversely affected anything.

[Mark Werner]

I make longbows as well; "primitive archery" stuff. There's an enormous amount of information on natural and synthetic glues in the literature. (The Primitive Bowyer's Bible series)

I tried gelatin once; to glue a blacksnake skin onto an osage longbow. Worked great; quite easy to do.

However...I confess I'm now a Titebond man all the way. These modern synthetic glues are really excellent. Extensive testing by the Primitive Archer folks found hide glue very strong, but not as strong as modern synthetics.