Wood’n Bits Workshop

I open with this photo because the ambiance is just so great.  This is a photo taken inside Ron Banks workshop.  Ron is a luthier extraordinaire and he uses hide glue, lots of hide glue.  This particular photo was taken on a day when Ron’s power went out.  Normally he heats his hide glue in a fancy electric glue pot (you can see it in the background) but Ron doesn’t let a lack of electricity get in his way.  He broke out a kerosene lantern, set up a support for a double-boiler and heated his glue using the lantern.  The photo is the result.

That photo underscores a reason that some think hide glue is a pain to work with as you need to heat it up.  If you’re going to use lots of the stuff, you need a significant device to make it happen.  We miniaturists, however, need only small doses of our adhesives.  This really simplifies things for us.  Makes it much cheaper too!

Before talking about use, let’s talk about acquisition.  Most woodworking stores will sell some form of hide glue.  In talking with instrument makers, however, it pays to avoid hide glues that don’t tell you their strength.

Hide glue is graded according to its gram-strength.  I’ll avoid a long discourse on how its measured and why as what’s important is to know that the higher the gram-strength, the stronger the glue is AND the shorter the working time.  The instrument-makers seem to prefer glue with a with a gram-strength of around 192.  I’ve found that works nicely for miniatures.  This isn’t surprising as luthiers and miniaturists work with small, thin pieces of wood and we do many of the same things with our joinery.  In short, we’re more like them than we are like carpenters who use aliphatic resins (grin).  I buy mine from Tools for Working Wood as their stuff is good, relatively cheap, and they sell it according to the gram-strength so there is no guesswork.  Currently you can get enough crystals (1 lb) to make a LOT of hide glue for the miserly sum of $5.50.

Mixing hide glue is pretty simple too.  Different people advocate different ratios.  Some suggest 50:50 (by volume, not weight) but many suggest 60:40 (water:glue) and I’ve found that about right for miniatures as it gives a nice, thin glue that isn’t overly runny.  You can play with this, however, and find the viscosity that suits your needs.  Mine is sort of like pancake syrup when it’s hot.

That ‘hot’ word has probably scared off a few of you.  It need not.  Our needs are small and thus, so are our heating needs.  I paid $7 (on sale) for this thermostat-controlled kettle.  Others use baby bottle warmers, small crock pots, etc.  All that’s necessary is to have the ability to control the temperature so that the water is maintained around 145F.

I keep a few ounces of water in it and it heats that water to 140-150F in about a minute.  Hot tap water is typically in this temperature range.  I can plunk this pot on my bench, plug it in, and in a couple minutes be ready to glue.

Of course, I need the glue.  The nice thing about hide glue is that you can mix it up and then store it in a refrigerator (think Jello that doesn’t smell as good).  I have two containers of it on hand.

The first container is this small jam jar.  I don’t really use this one for miniatures much as, well, it’s too much glue.  As you can see from the photo, the brush is too big too.  If I use a brush in miniatures it’s a small watercolor brush, which is easily cleaned by running hot water over it.

For my miniatures work I use this dispenser and it’s simply wonderful.

The nozzle on this dispenser is really tiny and so I can apply glue very precisely with it.  If I need to cover a larger area I squirt out a bunch of glue onto the surface and then use a brush to spread it around.  Notice the very long ‘cap.’  The part to the left of the red cap goes down the tube, keeping the dispenser tube cleaned.  The part that’s bent is hooked over the hot pot spout and holds the bottle in place while it rests in my hot pot.

This is great as all I do is grab that wire, lift the bottle, apply the glue, and drop it back in the pot.  It’s just like my aliphatic resin bottle use, but better.

What’s hidden in the advantages I mentioned in my previous post on hide glue is how well this works in operation.  As I apply it, the glue is hot.  It’s sticky.  It spreads easily and yet the parts stick together very well.  Very quickly, however, the glue cools and ’sets.’  It’s not completely hardened but it’s hard enough that if you’re just a bit light-handed, you can continue working on the piece, attaching other parts, etc.  Often you can avoid the need for clamps completely.  So, while you have to give yourself an advance notice of a couple minutes when you want to assemble, actual assembly goes much faster than with aliphatic resins where you’re clamping and waiting for things to dry.  It is best, however, to wait several hours before throwing the piece across the room as a joinery test as the glue won’t completely harden for some hours.

When you’re done for the day, close up your glue bottle and stick it in the fridge.  As hide glue is organic, it can go bad.  I’ve found, however, that I can keep it for several weeks in the fridge but after that, people suggest it’s great for the garden as its a good nitrogen source.  We miniaturists use so little of the stuff that I don’t think we’ll win any green thumb awards from the little bit that might find its way into our gardens.

I should add that you can buy liquid hide glue an avoid the mixing and heating.  What they do is add urea to hide glue and that keeps it liquid at room temperature.  This is ok for full-size woodworking but I think you really lose many of the good features of hide glue when you do this.  First, you get a product with a shelf life rather than one you can mix in small batches (important to those like us who small amounts).  More important is that you lose the quick set time which, to me, is absolutely wonderful.

I hope you’ll give hide glue a try.  We miniaturists do things more akin to what the marquetry and instrument makers do and for that reason, it shouldn’t be surprising that the glues they use work well for us as well.  If you have any questions, feel free to write.  I’d like to hear from you.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbit.com

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This entry was posted by Larry on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Glue, Miniatures, Techniques, Woodworking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.