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I am kind of perplexed by this whole thing at the moment... it could be my hangover though.

It would seem as though the Lee Valley FG and the Kremer FG should be the same, but the examples I have are definitely not. Yet I can't imagine Kremer would go to any extra trouble besides just repackaging the stuff.

I've been using the Kremer stuff for years. I started to get curious about the LV stuff when I saw people talking about how long the clamp time is.

A few years ago I glued a bridge with the Kremer glue, kept it clamped for one hour and strung the guitar immediately after removing the clamps. No problem whatsoever (though this is definitely not normal practice for me).

I did some tests by gluing up several pieces of scrap Spanish cedar with both glues, only using planed surfaces, then marked them. I was getting 100% wood failure out of the kremer glued joints in less than an hour and getting 100% glue failure out of the LV at the same time. It took around six hours of clamp time for me to get 100% wood failure out of the LV, if I recall.

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Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
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It could be that the glue is very different from batch to batch or that the age of the glue and the storage conditions have more to do with it than one might think.

Every batch I've ordered has been very consistent when fresh. I kept some
leftover glue in a bucket at room temperature for about a year (after one
year in the fridge) and things like it's viscosity and stringiness did change.
I've not kept any for longer than that, but it certainly change enough to
notice in that time.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a reseller buy it in large drums, repackage
and have bottles sit on a shelf for a few years before selling out a batch. Is
there a difference in smell, color or appearance between the LV and Kremer,
or is simply the working properties.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I just tryed the Norland glue this morning.
Gluing spruce to spruce-mahogany to rosewood-spruce to maple.
I did 6 samples-3 in a 65% humidity room and 3 in a 45%
room.
I left some glue on the pieces to dry to see how hard it got!
After 3 hours all glue on the outside was dry & hard in both humidities!
The joints in both rooms had to be separated with a hot knife!!
The wood broke loose if i did not use the heat!

I'm using this stuff!!!!!!

Plus High tack is right-if i got it on my hands it was sticky as hell!!
Had to use soap & aqua to remove it!


www.collinsguitars.com

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Mike Collins

Although I've only been using the fish glue for a little while, it seems to me that it doesn't gel the way HHG and sturgeon bladder glue do.   

I've not used any fishy glues, but is there any chance that this is what Franklin's bottled hide glue is? From the descriptions, they sound very alike...

No, Franklins Liquid Hide Glue is hide glue with additives to keep it workable at room temperature without heating.  The fish glue is actually extracted from fish skins bought from the fish packaging industry.  Although, it works like the LHG in practice, except it is much better, because it does not have to have all the additives.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Franklin's liquid hide glue has a fairly large dose of urea in it to lower the gel
temp. The main downside as I know is it looses hide glue's rigid, glass-like
hardness and becomes susceptible to cold creep.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Yeah, we've always been told it was adulterated hide glue, but the descriptions of fish glue seem so, well, identical.

BTW, I've begun using Franklin's liquid hide glue for fretting, and some binding jobs(headstocks). I have a fresh bottle that dries fast(open time is no more than 4-5 minutes) and dries brittle hard in 15-20 minutes.

Wonder if they changed their formulation in the past few years..... based on what i see today, I'd use it for everything(though I won't).

Let's see now, what was it you said to me?  Oh yeah.  Never mind. 

There was a recent article in one of the woodworking magazines and another Liquid Hide Glue got very good ratings on failure and such when compared to the other standard glues - Tite-bond, HHG, polyurethane glue, and epoxy.  The big loser, was the polyurethane glue.  The Liquid Hide Glue they used was something like Old Brown Glue, or something like that.  Maybe someone else will remember.  If not, I'll look it up Monday.  I store all my woodworking mags at my office.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Let's see now, what was it you said to.........

Ah, shaddup.... <bg>

Yep!   

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

The article on glues was in Fine Woodwoodworking a couple of months ago. The liquid hide glue was indeed 'Old Brown Glue' and I have to admit that I was surprised at the outcome. The testing regimen seemed fairly rigorous with machined joints in a variety of wood species and clamping pressures. Here is a link to the web article glue comparison of the test.


Here is a link Liquid Hide Glue to a supplier. The bottles are dated with a stated shelf life of one year.

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

After all this, I still get impression that real isinglass...sturgeon air bladder fish glue...seems to be the best of both worlds...hhg and fish glue...that is IF it dries as hard as hhg.   I'm going to get some when I get back from my vacation and give it a whirl on some projects.

For what it's worth, I did some tests with the Norland glue several years ago to get an idea of clamping time to see if I could use fish glue in a vacum press and not have it run forever.  I glued two pieces of 1/4" x 1/4" spruce together bent into a 15' radius form.  About 65 degrees and 45% humidity.  I pulled the clamps on one sample at 20 minutes and one at 30.  The bends in both samples held perfectly.  No creep.  I'm guessing the spruce absorbs water and helps it cure more quickly.  Other applications seem to require much longer clamping times though.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

Isinglass has long been a valued adhesive in violin and bowmaking. I'm still
not sure how I've never come to try it out as of yet, but I plan getting some
as well.

And Kent, as you said I think the clamping time has a lot to do with how fast
the wood absorbs moisture, as well as the stress on the joint. I've used it for
rub joints - no clamping at all - on well jointed spruce, mahogany, and koa
tops and backs and they've come out perfect.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I said something on line once about urea in Franklin's LHG, and got an e-mail from the company stating that it was something else. I don't remember what it was. However, the problem is not so much that they put something in, but that it seems to progressively denature the proteins, so that they loose the ability to gel and harden properly. I've heard that the stuff is OK when it;s fresh: I guess I just never got a fresh enough bottle.

I think the tackiness (sticky type vs well you know) is the key to the shorter clamp time.  I don't know from experience, and Dave LaPlante and/or Shawn could speak directly to this, but I understand that they were gluing dentilonnes/tentellonnes one at a time by hand, holding in place to the count of ten then gluing in another and repeating.  Apparently the tack was enough to hold.  Now, that could have been because of the particular FG they were using, vs, say, the LV version of the product.  I would love to get my hands on some that had a shorter clamp time.  the recommended 12 hours seem long, to me.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

You can certainly use HHG for tentellones, and the cooling and gelling effect will help along with the shrinkage. No issues with clamping fast enough, either.

Sure.  I actually like HHG too.  It is, though, a bit of an extra step to have to go through the heating process if you don't need to, to get similar results.  Simplification seems like a good thing.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

A quick comment on the Dentellones/Tentallones/Peonies thing, Jose' Romanillos commented to us that an early writer (can't remember who is was....)  misheard a guitarmaker who used the word "D"entellones (litterally "TEETH" or the cubic or rectangular blocks featured architecturally on a cornice of a building)  and instead wrote "T"entallones. Jose' actually prefers the term "peonies".

Yes, we used fish glue for these on the course. I attracted a bit of attention as I had a sharp tool onto which I speared them and held them in place (30 seconds or so) before disengaging.....the fish glue we used held quite well and had very high tack. Some folks used their fingers and one Japanese fellow cleverly made a pair of forceps from the trimmed portion of his bent sides.  

[QUOTE=DP LaPlante]

A quick comment on the Dentellones/Tentallones/Peonies thing, Jose' Romanillos commented to us that an early writer (can't remember who it was....)  misheard a guitarmaker who used the word "D"entellones (literally "TEETH" or the cubic or rectangular blocks featured architecturally on a cornice of a building)  and instead wrote "T"entallones. Jose' actually prefers the term "peonies".

Yes, we used fish glue for these on the course. I attracted a bit of attention as I had a sharp tool onto which I speared them and held them in place (30 seconds or so) before disengaging.....the fish glue we used held quite well and had very high tack. Some folks used their fingers and one Japanese fellow cleverly made a pair of forceps from the trimmed portion of his bent sides.  

[/QUOTE]

If one were to decide to use fish glue, is there any reason NOT to use isinglass, which seems to be the highest quality version with the greatest humidity resistance?   I guess I'm not understanding why one would choose to use a "lesser" glue in an object with as high a labor to materials cost ratio as a fine guitar.   How much more could it cost to use isinglass over the more normal products? $10.00? $20.00 per guitar?   Seems like a no-brainer to me, but I may be missing out on something.