hot hide glue for case goods?

G

[email protected]

New member
It seems to me that there are many qualities to recommend hot hide glue, for constructing case goods.However, the rapid setup time would seem to be prohibitive. Does anyone use hot hide glue for things such as drawer glue up? What strength do you use? How much time do you have to square things up? What did they do in the 18th century?
Thanks,
Ed Gerrard
Hickory, NC
 
I use hot hide glue for all of my glue ups. I see the quick tack as an advantage.

For a case, drawer, or anything. I have all my clamps ready to go. I put a little extra water in the pot. and I usually have 5 min or so to comfortably put everything together. Being prepared with clamps etc, make this amount of time plenty. You can usually move the joint a little with clamps for about an extra minute or so, but I prefer not to do this.

If it's something like a large case where I'm worried I may not have enough time, I will only glue half. I.E. I will dry fit the bottom of the case and glue the top down. Square it up just like it was all glued and give it at least 20 min, then return and glue the bottom.

After about 20 min, the glue turns rubbery, I just take any squeeze out, peel it off, toss it in my glue pot and my cleanup is done. no worries about finishing.

And the biggest advantage is that if things go bad, I just pull out my heat gun, a small brush, and some water, and after a few minutes pop it back apart!
 
Thank you for the quick reply. Do you know what strength glue you are using? 198? 250? Does it make a difference? Are there many people using hot hide glue for case work (other than you and Colonial Williamsburg)?
Ed
 
I attended a chair presentation by Dan O'Sullivan, Windsor chair maker from Durham, NC and he indicated he adds a small amount of salt to his hide glue. He did say it reduced the strength slightly but extended the working time to about 20 minutes.

I believe it as during the presentation one of the legs was installed in the wrong  seat location. Dan was able to take the chair leg apart and move it to the proper location.

David Turner
North Raleigh
 
It is my understanding that adding salt or urea does extend the open time, at the expense of about 10% of the strength. But, if you are going to do that, why not use liquid hide glue, which is the same thing?
 
Ed,
You may want to check out Old Brown Glue. - www.oldbrownglue.com - I haven't built any large case pieces but I have used OBG on smaller pieces.  I like it but it does take much longer to set up.  For traditional hide glue I use 192 gram - high clarity.  It doesn't smell as strongly and has a little more open time than the 251 gram which is stronger and might be a better choice for larger pieces.  Hopefully, those with much more experience than I have can point you in the right direction.

Also, you may want to check out Patrick Edwards website - wpatrickedwards.com - for a wealth of info on hide glue.  He is a Cartouche Award winner and generously helped me over the phone one time answering many of my questions about hide glue.

Lonnie
 
Old brown glue is great for long open time, say 20 mins.  Than there is hot hide glue which is great for smaller or large glue ups. All  you will need for more open time is to add more water, or salt, or urea.  All you need is 192 strength hide glue. I see no reason to use any other glue for most woodworking tasks. 
 
Hi Ed,

Years ago, I used hot hide glue a little for case work, but certainly not enough to qualify as truly experienced. So I don't really have much to offer in the way of specific practical advice. But, you asked about 18th century practice, which I think is an interesting question.

There's not much detailed discussion of the use of glue in 18th century sources, but I believe we can extrapolate some general possible strategies based on a number of other sources. Specifically, I've re-looked at Moxon, a 1734 Builder's Dictionary, Nicholson (1831) and Holtzapffel (1843). Not to mention a couple of 20th century sources. I'd be happy to discuss these in more detail if folks are interested, but think it would be quite tedious in the present message.

In brief, I believe 18th century cabinet-makers likely used some combination of three related strategies to aid in gluing up case-work.

One strategy may well have been to briefly ramp up the temperature of the glue just prior to the glue-up. Hide glue can be compromised if this is repeated too often or the temperature taken too high (over 180ºf), but a sparing and judicious use of this strategy would not only allow the glue to penetrate better (especially with denser timbers), but would buy some time before it cools too much.

On a related note, I believe they may have pre-heated the joinery parts, when possible, toward the same end. Nicholson specifically mentions this when dealing with longer edge joints. Also, it seems well established that a traditional method of laying veneer on larger surfaces was to pre-heat the surface being veneered as well as the caul which was to be used in providing uniform pressure on the veneer. This actually allowed the glue to re-liquify and penetrate/move as required when the slightly convexly bowed battens were clamped down on the caul. Apparently, the caul was often pre-heated over a shavings blaze, especially when other sources of heat may not have been in use. I'm also thinking that they may have moved glue-ups closer to a stove or fireplace during the winter months, in order to take advantage of the additional heat.

The third strategy has to do with planning and preparation. One aspect of this may well have been to do glue-up in smaller increments if at all possible. Nicholson seems to hint at this when discussing mortise and tenon joints. However, that is not often possible, in which case, the idea is to make sure everything needed is at hand prior to brushing on the glue, even rehearsing if at all possible with more elaborate glue-ups. Plus, recruit additional hands if available. Nicholson mentions that longer rubbed joint glue-ups would benefit by having at least three people at the task - one on each end and one in the middle.

Eighteenth-century cabinet-makers obviously found a way to do such glue-ups successfully, so I see no reason someone today couldn't pull it off if that is their intent. With a little practice, it may not be any more stressful than similar glue-ups with aliphatic resin based glues.

Hoping to be of a little practical help, I'm including a link to a small pdf file of a couple of short chapters about glue usage from an industrial arts textbook, _Instructional Units in Hand Woodwork_, by Tustison and Brown (1930):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5YwO2tVTpdcQjVLWWlhNXJGTmM/view?usp=sharing

Hope this has been of some interest.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR



 
I will play my Trump card. Hide glue is fragile. By that I mean it is not friendly to grain expansion and contraction. Moisture and heat is another concern not even considering wood species. Hide glue is excellent for many if not most joints and reversible so another question is what hide? Rabbit ( Flea bitten varmints) I like cows but not so much horses (they broke my leg when I was 3), what about mules? Woodn't you think a bear hide would hold better. Fish? Each has it's own properties for many different situations. Might there be another alternative. I would think dinosaur hide glue would last thousands of years. What about naughas or snipes?
With all the hot air in DC there should be plenty of open time to consider your alternatives.
What about poly's. Is Elmer's reversible?    So what about politicians, Poly meaning many and ticks meaning blood suckers. Oh wait they will only last 4 -6 years. Give me 150 years to answer that question.
 
Don is certainly right about heating boards prior to glue-up with hot hide glue. There are a number of extant 19th century prints showing the interior of cabinet shops with boards leaning up next to fireplaces and stoves. Today we substitute heat-guns for stoves.
In living memory are the tales told of the glue-up room at the Martin Guitar factory before they switched to white and yellow aliphatic resin glues sometime after WW II. The room was kept quite hot, up to 90 degrees, and if you opened the door for too long you would get pieces of wood thrown at your head by the assemblers. Whenever I've toured the factory and watch all those parts being assembled with yellow glue I cringe, and resolve never to take on a post-war guitar restoration job!
 
Jeff, I'm not quite sure how to square your statement about the fragility of hide glue with the widespread acceptance of findings which indicate that hide glue, much like the aliphatic resins, can produce bonding which is stronger than the wood itself. If true, failure of a joint due to wood movement is more likely to be due to "fragility" in the wood rather than in the glue.

With one major caveat, namely that the glue is properly selected, prepared and applied to a properly fitted joint. Yes, it does take some thought and experience to consistently get the best results, which is why I supplied the link, yesterday, to a few pages which might help people toward this end.

If one wishes to delve even deeper into the subject (possibly to the point of confusion), they may want to look at the _Glue Handbook_ published by the Keystone Glue Company in 1934:

https://archive.org/details/GlueHandbook

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
Desk lid battens or an ebony cross banded top edge on a Federal bedside table. Elmer's White glue seems to allow for expansion and contraction where hide glue fractures and separates. Without as much attention to temperature there are many options. With that said I will only use hide glue on period restorations.
I don't mean to say either or. Just that there are situations where on might work as an alternative over another. 
 
White glue has ton of creep capabilities which is great for wide panels or case sides. Hide glue is by far the best option for almost everything.  Fish glue is great for non stress joints or for metal and wood. Fish glue allows wood and metal to expand and contract independently.  Protein glues are the only glues that stick to themselves all others must be scraped to bare wood.  Rabbits skin glue is great for gold leafing.  Rice glue is great for banding and inlay.

FR
 
Freddy, I appreciate your clarification and agree. I was only suggesting that there are multiple ways of considering joinery. When someone says there is only one way then it sparks my interest for another. Jeff
 
Jeff, no need to apologize - I certainly don't feel insulted. In fact, I believe forums such as this can better serve people if different points of view can be expressed and discussed in a civil manner. Which has invariably been one of the strengths of this forum. In large part, I suspect, because a higher percentage of participants are doing actual woodworking in the shop rather than at the keyboard. The down side of that is that the forum can be pretty quiescent at times, and I've appreciated your efforts to enliven it periodically.

I have some further thoughts on cross-banding and clamping (the traditional trade term for what most folks call "breadboard ends" today), and modern glues, but don't have time to get into that at the moment. Maybe later if I feel it might add anything constructive to the discussion?

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top