To the OP… I’d consider OBG just the same as Liquid hide from Titebond as far as bridges… I may be wrong about this but you know, I'm not taking any chances with bridges.

That is absolutely not the case. I have been using it for bridges for 3 years now. It is far stronger and higher quality than the Titebond garbage.

I've not noticed a difference between it and HHG for bridges. If you don't do a good job of getting the joint fit well it won't stick no matter what type of glue you use.

Hey Dan, happy to get a documented opinion about this.

I get from what you're saying that the main difference with HHG would be in longer open working time, without any drawbacks from the added urea? Is that your opinion from experience?

I know the Titebond LH gets quite a bad rap, but before I turned to fish as my go-to "bench glue" I used it quite a bit for low-stress applications and never had a problem with it, but yeah, I moved on fearing problems down the line.

Also, do you keep it at room temp so it’s readily usable on your bench? It's quite thick even at room temp, so you have to heat it up anyway, don't you?

Yes the open time with OBG is much higher therefore much easier to work with too. You can heat it up if you want but I just use it at room temp. Brushes are good for spreading it around when it's cold and thicker. The urea seems to lower the gram strength of it a bit but not nearly enough to create a problem. When I was first getting into hide glue I once made my own from rawhide dog chews (the kind you can get in bulk) and while it was very strong it had maybe a 5-8 second open time which was awful to work with trying to clamp things together.

Fish glue I have seen fail quite a few times. It's good for certain things that aren't under stress but if you can use hide glue with OBG or HHG I always recommend it.

I use it for box closing and binding, and don't treat it any differently than regular HHG. Heat it in the glue pot before application, and reheat after getting the clamps on. Particularly with binding, regular HHG gets quite messy with lumps of gel everywhere. OBG squeezes out pretty well even after it cools, but still a little more comes out after reheating, so I wouldn't be comfortable using it at room temperature. Though I didn't reheat the first time I used it for box closing, and it still held ok. But it also made me nervous that the squeeze-out never completely dried (even after weeks), just turned sort of rubbery. It seems to form a waterproof film on the surface when exposed to air, which burns off when reheated and doesn't re-form (then it dries hard like regular HHG). It's actually quite useful, since it slows the drying time while working. Even without worrying about the gel time, HHG is still a bit of a hurry to get to the reheating step before it dries out.

Hey Dennis,

How do you go about reheating?

Hold it over an open flame on the kitchen stove. Keep it moving so as not to char any edges