I'm putting together a small bedside table. I was thinking about using hide glue to glue the table top together. The top will be of 3 or 4 boards 20 inches long by 3.5 inchis wide by .75 or so inches thick. Is this an appropriate situation in which to use hide glue? I was going to warm the boards in the oven before appling the glue.
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.
Thanks, john
An appropriate application but no special reason to do so other than if you simply want to afaict. No need to warm the boards, in fact I'd think that a bad idea from stability standpoint. You mixing your own or using purchased ready-to-use glue?
Intended to note that one reason in particular to use hide glue is that it can be disassembled at some future time for repair/restoration much more easily than most modern glues--especially, of course, things like the Gorilla Glue types.
Hide glue is a holdover from the distant past. It is still useful for veneering; for joining boards to make a table top, you are much better off with modern alternatives. Dave
Hide glue is the best thing for all furniture, except biscuits. It's an excellent glue, has good long-term behaviour, has good repair prospects in the future and has good behaviour in use.
Start off easy - get a bottle of Titebond's cold hide glue. It's dead easy to use and works almost as well. Try this out before you start on the hot stuff.
To use hot hide glue you'll need some glue pearls (chunk or slab glue is too much trouble). You'll also want a heated pot and a glue brush.
The pot should be thermostatically controlled, water-jacketed and electric -- nearly all of the reasons why people could dislike hide glue are avoided by this simple automatic control and convenience. My pot is a surplus chem lab stirrer hotplate with a cast aluminium gluepot inside. Others have used kitchen slow-cooker pots to heat glue, or simple hotplates. You don't have to go out and buy an expensive electric gluepot to get started. There should be a wire (stainless lockwire, brass picture wire, or just copper electrical wire) tied tightly across the top diameter as a brush wiper.
The brush should be a real glue brush and not too big - mine is Chinese hand-tied hog bristle. Avoid metal collars around the bristles as they can react with the wet glue.
To use the glue, soak the pearls for a few hours in _cold_ water before use. About 3 hours will do - it doesn't need to be overnight (unless you're using slab glue). Use an excess of cold water, otherwise they tend to clump and only soak properly around the edge. Well-soaked pearls should look like tapioca pudding - individual pale white blobs, but still separable if you poke them. Pour off excess water before heating. About 1/2 hour will generally be enough to get the glue ready for use. It should have the consistency of golden syrup in use, thicker or thinner for some jobs. Boil off some water to thicken it, thin it with hot water from the pot's water jacket. Keep any skin stirred in (don't do this immediately before a delicate job). If there's a lot of skinning, then your pot is too hot - about 50°C is all you need, once the glue has melted.
After use, let the pot go cold and the glue re-solidify. Rinse out the brush, but don't worry about getting it perfectly clean. Glue can be left in the pot and re-heated in the future. Dried glue stores well (pour on a little water before re-heating). Wet cold glue will store overnight, but goes off if kept too long. Always wash out the water jacket after a day's work though, because the glue traces from rinsing the brush will fester in the water jacket and _that_ does stink!
Burned glue smells burned (turn the heat down). Rotten glue smells rotten. Most of the time though, with a thermostatic pot, then the glue shouldn't smell any more than slightly noticeable. The old tales of vile gluepots of stinking fishheads are from over-heating the glue on a stove.
Once you're equipped to deal with hide glue for wood, then get hold of some rabbit skin glue too. This is flexible when set and is useful for leatherwork, flexible work and some aspects of bookbinding.
Why?
A "Fiesta" crockpot (the little mini one) is a perfect glue pot. Andy gave you good advice. The only thing I would add is to use it where "appropriate". Mortise & tennon, joints, veneer, dovetails, etc are all perfectly good places to use hide glue. Edge gluing boards is a perfect place for yellow glue or poly glue. There's no need for biscuits, dowels, etc. since the glue is so strong.
A lack of sash cramps might be one reason for using hide glue. The term 'rubbed joint' derives from the ability to make panel joints using hide glue.
One simply planes the edges dead true, ie without the hollow used for cramped-up joints, applies glue to the edges, warmed up by passing over the top of the stove a few times but certainly not in an oven, and the rubs until the glue grabs.
The disadvantage of the un-compressed joint is a tendency for the glue line to widen as the wood shrinks, as it will, over the long term.
Jeff G
Hide glue goes bad in the bottle, stinks and is fussy to prepare, has no resistance to either heat or water.
The argument of "reversibility" is an attempt to make a virtue out of a fault. A screw is reversible, too.
The same could be said of beer.
You've either never used hide glue or don't know how to use it properly.
Why not use hide glue for edge-gluing boards ? You certainly could use a PVA based glue, but then you could use those equally well on M&Ts etc. I can see reasons to favour one or the other (mainly about future repair) but I don't see a strong reason to influence this choice according to the _type_ of joint.
I don't use PU glue. I've never used it for anything and been happy with the results afterwards.
Because hide glue isn't quite as strong as a PVA glue. If I were to use hide glue on the edge of a board, I'd want to reinforce it with splines, dowels, etc. PVA glue is strong enough on its own with no reinforecement.
-snipped for brevity-
a good tip I picked up somewhere is to prepare a batch by cold water soaking, then divide the batch into amounts you'll be likely to use at a session and freeze them individually. it keeps for a long time this way and makes for easy cleanup and no waiting for a batch to soak.
Sounds like a very good idea, I'll try that... BTW: What material shuld one use for the glue pot? I currently use glass (pyrex), but if I'm no careful dried glue takes glass chips out of the bottom when removed with not enough care (i.e. pulling on the linden bark glue brush...)
You can use unsoaked pearl glue if you're in a hurry, it just takes about an hour's extra heating.
Substantial metal (good thermal inertia) but tinned rather than bare cast iron. Some are tinned copper, more recent ones are aluminium. If you use the common iron ones with either pale veneers or oak, there's a risk of staining.
Both are stronger than the wood, so the strength difference doesn't really matter. More to the point is that PVA gives you a bit longer open time so you can get the panels aligned before the glue sets up too much. It can be hard to do that with hot hide glue - especially on larger panel glue-ups.
-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"
Tim Douglass
Beer is reversable?
jDrink enough of it and it will come back up the way it went down.
Thanks to everyone for the help. I talked to a cabinet maker buddy of mine and he said go with the hide glue if I want, much as was suggested here, but that the good PVAs will do a fine job as well and are less trouble to prepare, ie no soaking, glue pot etc. I've got good PVA kicking around here so I'll dig it out and go with that for now and use the hide glue for some other project.
Thanks, john
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