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I am working on a Bridge Plate Glue up heating caul, to pre heat the soundboard for HHG, but a test revealed that a heated metal object may raise the grain if I wasnt mistaken. Is this what is happening? Does anyone use a BPGUHC to preheat for HHG? Mine is 1/8 aluminium sheet, but it may need to be thicker. Im thinking going with 1 inch aluminium stock to hold the heat.

 Im also thinking center line notch to gap the center glue joint.

 

Thx 

I think that may be overkill. If you work in a reasonably warm room...70 degrees F., and you work reasonably quickly, this shouldn't be an issue. I seem to be able to work at a fairly leisurely pace with HHG, but it's fast enough. You can also just heat up your parts in a cabinet under your glue-up bench or go-bar deck with a 75 watt light bulb. Yours may be a solution for a non-existent problem. Remember, hundreds of thousands of guitars have been made with HHG and no heated cauls.

Total overkill, for sure. A hair dryer will provide all the pre-warming you need, if needed. Like Rick, I don't find myself rushed at all; as long as you are well setup and prepared for clamping, even doing the plates to the rims is a cinch.

 Joining plates is among the fastest of the glue ups I do...

Ditto on that one.

I'll take pics of my method of using brown flatback tape and a sprung joint. The only times when it doesn't work are when you have severely potato-chipped backs...and maybe they're not the best thing to use, anyway.   With the tape system, you can just join and join to your heart's content.

And thanks, Mario, for the tip on keeping the HHG in nice dispenser-topped plastic bottles weighted with stainless steel nuts and bolts. This truly makes it no more of a big deal to use than white glue. OK, you have to have a glue pot for heating the stuff, but my frozen glue heats up in about 20 minutes, and then I'm set to go.

I'm going to give a tutorial to my staff next week on using HHG for center seams, bracing, etc., and I'm going to convert everyone here over to using it for all the top-related glue-ups.   

I dont think its overkill. If your gonna use a blowdryer, why not just do it right and heat a caul? I may not be adding enough water to the glue, and maybe its not getting to 140 degrees, but Ive been having time issue problems so Im looking for solutions. Maybe just heating the BP would do, after all, its just gonna get stuck on there pretty quick, with little positioning needed, just shove it to the front, make sure its even.

 

Tried the bottle HG, and it was a quick dry disaster, again maybe not enough water, but more water = less strength.

i If your gonna use a blowdryer, why not just do it right and heat a caul?

Because the hair dryer is universal takes but a few seconds to use, and can be used to warm any and all parts. A specialized caul for every application will take up a lot of space, time, effort, etc... I also use the hair dryer to dry the water off th surface at every cleanup. Bush the joint clean with hot water, dry immediately with the hair dryer. I spend so much time with that hair dryer in my hand, I have considered hiring a lacky just for that part. Not much training required <bg>

Besides, get everything figured out(sounds like you're close, so just keep at it) and you'll see that hot hide glue isn't all that mysterious and complicated.

 

And your hair will always look GREAT!!

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] Ditto on that one.

I'll take pics of my method of using brown flatback tape and a sprung joint. The only times when it doesn't work are when you have severely potato-chipped backs...and maybe they're not the best thing to use, anyway.   With the tape system, you can just join and join to your heart's content.

And thanks, Mario, for the tip on keeping the HHG in nice dispenser-topped plastic bottles weighted with stainless steel nuts and bolts. This truly makes it no more of a big deal to use than white glue. OK, you have to have a glue pot for heating the stuff, but my frozen glue heats up in about 20 minutes, and then I'm set to go.

I'm going to give a tutorial to my staff next week on using HHG for center seams, bracing, etc., and I'm going to convert everyone here over to using it for all the top-related glue-ups.   [/QUOTE]

If you can see fit to have someone snap photos during the tutorial for your staff, it's almost destined to become an instant "classic" on this, and other luthier sites...HHG (and its various uses) is one of those perpetual threads/topics that comes up about every 8 days. If you don't have time (or don't want to), that's perfectly understandable, but I'm sure lots of us would love to see it. Thanks for considering it.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Hesh has done a tutorial on using tape but didn't use HHG.
Plate Joining - Using Tape

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Ok, its done, I heated the BP until I could feel it hot on top, about 25 seconds. and waited with the HHG to keep it at 140 for 10 minutes, pre-soaked in water, 53 water/ 47 glue. Went in nice and easy, lots of squeeze out. The 3/4 nylon brush is a sad way to apply HHG I need to maybe use a 1.5 inch 2 swipe brush.

No caul or blowdryer needed

I put on a 1/4 inch thick,small wood triangle dot-glued to the BP for ease of handling. Poped off nicely after it served its purpose. 12 go bars or so on a newly made caul. My top is all glued up, yea baby!

 

As for X braces, I am considering a heat blanket heated 21 inch HHG tray, you dip in 140 degree HHG and apply the  brace, no brush nonsense. Dont like that brush!  

Once again, way overkill.

You're making it look like HHG is terribly hard to use. It's not. Use Mario's trick of keeping the glue in small plastic squeeze bottles with dispensing tips that can be closed. I use what must be something like 4 Oz. bottles.   Put some stainless steel nuts and bolts in the bottle to weight it down and act as a heat sink.   Drop the bottle in your glue pot with some water.   Now you can dispense HHG as easily as you do Titebond...no stupid brushes necessary unless you want to do a wide area. Even then, you're better off with a piece of plastic or a scrap of back wood to use as a spreader.

I hate to say this, but this is what happens when luthiers think too much and don't just get down to the business of joining and gluing wood. It's not difficult stuff to do; just do it. Do it properly, don't worry about 53/47...that, too, is obsessive and over the top...just learn to work assuredly and with moderate speed, and it will all come out just fine. HHG is actually very forgiving. Reasonable craftsmanship is all you need to get superior joints. Look, this stuff has been used for literally thousands of years in much worse conditions than most of us have in our shops. Do what you have to do to get good results; doing any more than that is a waste of time.

BlackHeart, check out these 2 threads by Hesh on using HHG. This information came from Mario (now Grumpy). The


Tutorial - Hot HIde Glue (part one)

The Smell of HHG In The Morning

bottles are great for application and brushes aren't necessary. The trick is learning to apply the right amount of glue to get complete coverage with minimal squeeze out. The bottles can be bought from many suppliers or you can get used hair dye bottles from most any hair salon.

If you do want a warmer to extend gluing time, Colin S has said that a buffet warmer comes in handy for keeping parts warm to increase gluing time. These can be bought at yard sales or off ebay for little of nothing.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Just move to the tropics. My glue up room is always between 30 and 40 degrees. Now that I've got the dehumidifier running full time there it's a real pleasure to retreat into my little sancutary. Sure gives you lotsa time to get everything where you need it. Switching to HHG was the easiest thing I've done in guitar building.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia

I think that like French polishing, the difficulty of using HHG has been blown up out of all proportion. As Rick and Mario say you have more time than you think IF you are organised. HHG in small nozzled squeezy bottles with the patent Mario SS bolts as a heat sink, bottle in baby bottle warmer. Parts to be joined warmed up, I use a food warming tray for braces, bridges etc. If I feel that I want to warm say the top to attach a bridge then I'll use a hair dryer, but generally if the working environment is comfortably warm then that isn't necessary.

I've worked on 300 year old lutes and 200 year old guitars that were put together with hide glue without the benefit of electric warmer, digital thermometers, climate contolled workshops and all the other impedimenta that we take for granted today. And do you know what, the joints are as good today as when first made.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Don Williams probably gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received when it comes to doing something "new"...like using HHG, or putting together x-braces for the first time, cutting a different endgraft, drilling different tuner holes, binding, etc.

Just practice it a few times on wood that isn't valuable. Plywood, scrap cutoffs, 2x4, shelving spruce (my personal favorite, dirt cheap at the big box stores). The same holds true for HHG...waste a bit on scrap finding out how fast the stuff gels, how warm you need to get the parts to give you a bit more open time, how much to put on in order to get a good joint, whether you can use a brush, a scrap of wood, or your finger to spread it, etc. In fact, related to HHG I "think" I remember Mario saying that at one time he used an actual timer and ran through his plate glue up procedure a few times until he knew he had it down cold...pit box drills, so to speak. ;-0 And he's a pro's pro.

Just do a little experimentation to give yourself some confidence. That's all you'll need to pull off about 95% of the things you'll need to do in this sport.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

I gotta say that I was dreading and looking forward to using HHG in equal measure. Then I actually plugged in the hot pot (month or two ago), dissolved some glue in some water (a la Frank Ford instructions), warmed it up to an even 60-62 degrees (celsius), and did some test gluings. Couldn't have been any easier. Mind you, I'm already fairly fast in terms of clamping and gluing (been practicing with titebond, basically), and I haven't tried gluing anything massive yet (like top to rims), but brace sized bits of wood to other bits of wood worked fine, and I'm looking forward to sticking on some bracing in the next couple of days.

Ok thanks all, I think I missed the heat sink bolt part, thats why my bottle glue didnt work out.

The name BlackHeart?- Im also a 'recording artist' (acoustic guitar), and thats the name I went with.  And no one wants autographs?

 

I have some bits and pieces of the old Harmony/Chicago production tooling including some top gluing cauls. They glued tops and backs on in a single screw press and the cauls were made with bits of rubber that evened out the pressure. I bet they could HHG a top or back on in less than a minute. No problem...

Well, I gotta ask if no one else is Rick, where the heck did you get those?

 

I will be running HHG tests for my top/side glue up next week! See if I can get it to work.

 

Wow!

Humidiy was 45% last night for glue up, today its 75%. I hope I dodged that bullet! The top had 8 hours before any rise.

[QUOTE=Rick Turner]I have some bits and pieces of the old Harmony/Chicago production tooling including some top gluing cauls. They glued tops and backs on in a single screw press and the cauls were made with bits of rubber that evened out the pressure. I bet they could HHG a top or back on in less than a minute. No problem...[/QUOTE]

Rick, when did they go out of business?  I think I bought a bunch of their neck blanks.  Around 1980 or so?  I could be wrong.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

[QUOTE=Rick Turner] I have some bits and pieces of the old Harmony/Chicago production tooling including some top gluing cauls. They glued tops and backs on in a single screw press and the cauls were made with bits of rubber that evened out the pressure. I bet they could HHG a top or back on in less than a minute. No problem...[/QUOTE]

George Lowden uses a similar idea using a bicycle innertube with fabric stapled to a piece of ply.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

Beats Go-bars!