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Somewhat noobish. Please be somewhat gentle.

Great site, and comes highly recommended from my son.

I'm building a OM (C.Grellier) out of black walnut and Sitka. I have a glue question regarding the build. When in Boise I was talked into buying some "Old Brown Glue" from Woodcraft. I am familiar with using LMI YIG, using it before they brought out the fancy applicator.

Any preferences? Does anyone use the OBG, or do I just settle into using standard LMI YIG?

OBG requires heating to between 120F and 140F. It's better if it's refrigerated. It's also removeable with a heat gun and patience, as I understand.

Thoughts, if any?

TIA
Arnie

I think that a beginner should just use Titebond original, or the LMI glue, whichever you prefer. You can deal with the different procedures needed for working with hide glue after you have a better feel for building instruments.

Old Brown Glue is a good halfway step into using hot hide glue, which I use for everything on a guitar, but it is better to learn other things before you make decisions about other adhesives. Some folks get their panties in a bunch about what glue is the right glue for each thing you do when building a guitar. Leave all that for later guitars, not your first.

Don
Good thoughts, and thanks for the reply.
Is Titebond Original and LMI YIG very comparable?
Can it be adjusted or removed with heat?
As a woodworker, I've used Titebond II for years and liked the product.

TIA
Arnie

Keep Titebond II out of the guitar shop. Original Titebond or Original Titebond Extend among the Titebond products.

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Peter Havriluk

the joinery mate is more important than the glue. Make your joints neat. I agree that tite bond original is a good glue to start with. Once you get your building process nailed than start with different glues. I am a fan of fish glue for all the bracing and gluing top and backs Tite bond for necks. Hot Hid for the bridge. You will learn a lot , and remember you will learn more from a failure than from a success. Enjoy the mistakes learning not to make them again will make you a better builder.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Arnie--

Titebond Original and LMI yellow glue are pretty comparable. I'm not a chemist. I think technically Titebond Original is an aliphatic resin, and the LMI glue is a polyvinyl acetate, but they are meant to be pretty similar in function. Compared to something completely different, like an epoxy, or CA glue, or hide glue, Titebond Original and LMI yellow glue are pretty similar.

Regarding the heat question, let me say that all of those types of glue can be loosened up with enough heat. Original lets go faster than the other forms of Titebond, I think. But with all AR or PVA glues, you have to completely clean off the glue before you try to re-glue, because new glue won't stick to old glue. Hide glue has the advantage there; new hide glue sticks to old hide glue just fine.

If you are asking whether Titebond original can be softened with heat, and the parts that are glued can be moved around a bit and the glue sets up again, I'm going to let someone else address that. I heat and reposition with hot hide glue, and I know folks talk about it with various types of Titebond, but if you want to do that a lot, you might want to get one of the other formulations of Titebond that holds up better to the heat.

One thing to watch out for with anything other than Original is that the glue lines might show up more. I have heard that is a thing with Titebond II. Think about the center seam on the top. You don't want that showing dark with a glue line.

Maybe someone who knows the various Titebond formulations better than I do can help you more. The point of my advice was that, as a new builder, you have a lot to get on top of. Using a more challenging glue is something that can be distracting from the things you need to focus on. That's all I was trying to say. Again, I use 100% hot hide glue on my guitars, and I love it. But I would not have loved it on my first guitar.

Excellent responses from all. As we all know, there's lots to think about when building a guitar, so as a noob, KISS is a very good approach.

I'll probably drop by Ace in the morning and pick up a small bottle of Titebond Original.

Thanks again.

TIII is the version that dries dark...it's been a very long time since I became aware of cold creep and stopped using TII, but I don't remember there being any appreciable difference in the color of the dried product. TII has a definite ability to allow joint movement after curing, and TIII is just abysmal...the first time I ever dealt with TIII was when I was assigned to finish up someone else's work and they had left massive drips of the stuff on the joints...it scraped off scarily easy as of course it doesn't fully cure until brought up to around 200F and it was basically kind of soft and rubbery (what I thought was going to an assignment of nightmarish proportions working above my head turned out to be super easy).

the point being T original and extend are the ones to use because they have little cold creep of the joinery, the others are inappropriate for use in any fine woodworking IMHO...as a note though TIII is perfect for using on purflings and such that are going to be bent to shape as that will not only fully cure it, but it will also not fail because of the heating and will in fact interlink at a molecular level and hold things together while being bent under heat.

I do have some dim memory of Elmer's being the most difficult to deal with when dealing with dried globs of the stuff...it was real hard...the type of hard that required a chisel to remove as opposed to a 5in1 tool

Vinegar is what you can use to soften titebond and other similar glues, as well as hide glue. If you need to take apart a glue joint soak a strip of paper towel in vinegar and lay it over or along side of the joint and allow the vinegar to wet the glue. Then use a stainless spatula or palette knife to separate the joint. Carbon steel tools will create a black stain when in contact with vinegar so should be avoided.

Good going, welcome to the forum as well. When you do maybe google Titebond date codes and select your bottle of Titebond Original reviewing the date code as well. We buy new bottles every year and write the date on them and then the old stuff we toss or use for jigs. We did the same thing with fish before we stopped using it.

Keeping it simple is important because you have a thousand things to learn and not just the woodworking of Lutherie that by the way will break some woodworking rules with good reason. You have the physics of the guitar and set-up to learn too. Fretting alone is a learning experience as is nut making, etc.

I'm not on board with old brown glue for instrument use and we are pretty much exclusively HHG for any bracing, bridges, etc. But HHG if your chops are not first rate will fail and is harder to use if you cannot resect the short open times.

As for who gets wounded over my not being on board with OBG not into a glue argument that's not why I'm here but my primary defense would he why? Why do you need anything beyond Titebond Original or HHG, two superb choices both in service today and both doing a fine job when the person applying the glue knows what the hell they are doing.

This is one of the things I like about hot hide glue. Near infinite shelf life. You can buy a pound of granules and build many guitars over many years without having to buy it again.

Another great thing is that you can clean up squeeze-out after it dries, so you don't have to get in a big hurry or worry about missing a spot or have every part of the joint accessible with clamps on.

I've used Old Brown before, but I don't think it has any real advantage over HHG, and has the disadvantages of being more expensive and coming pre-mixed so you lose the unlimited shelf life. It does remain workable at room temperature, but it doesn't feel like it would set up properly without being clamped up hot or reheated, same as HHG (though I've never done any actual testing to verify that feeling).

I used OBG for box closing on a few guitars because HHG's gel form was causing me trouble, preventing the joint from fully closing until reheated, at which time it would shift around and spool clamps would fall off. But I'm back to HHG now, using a paintbrush to apply a thin layer so it doesn't have far to squish after reheating. Squeeze bottle is faster, but when you're going to be reheating anyway the brush gives better control.

Arnie—

All of the information about different forms of hide glue could be useful to you in the future, but as mentioned, it is something to table for now. If/when you get down the road and want to try using hide glue, file this tidbit away regarding Old Brown Glue: it is simply hot hide glue with enough urea added to keep it liquid (very viscous, but liquid) at room temperature, which makes it different from regular hot hide glue in terms of how to work with it. Whether you find the addition of urea or salt to hot hide glue to be a good thing or a bad thing is something that folks can disagree over. If you can make hot hide glue, you can add urea (or salt) to regular hot hide glue and not spend money on Old Brown Glue. But all of that is something to put off while you learn other things. Any regular yellow wood glue, like Titebond Original or LMI yellow glue, is going to work great on a first guitar.

Fish glue & Elmers Carpenter glue.

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Mike Collins

glue make is simple
glues are either a drying glue or curing glue . Tite bond , white glue , epoxies , CA are all curing glue and that means once cured it will have to be removed if you need to reglue a joint.
Tite bond , and white glue will break down with heat usually aroung 145F

Drying glues , fish glue hide glue , old brown glue are drying glues and you can reglue as they will reamalgamate and that means when water is introduced it will become glue again.

Adding salt to glue has been proven to weaken it so if you use salt make a fest glue up to see you still have the strength.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

My understanding of OBG is that it has a longer open working time and that is why some like it. But you can make HHG do that too by adding slat or urea so I don't see the point with using OBG. Like John I like fish glue to glue the top and back to the sides mainly because of it's open time.

Hundreds of thousands, probably even millions, of guitars have been built with Titebond Original. I used to love the LMI white but I see no point in using the LMI Yellow as opposed to good ole Titebond though I usually do buy a bottle of it if I order something from LMI.

So I agree with others that Titebond is a great choice for a beginner and in fact is a fine choice for the master maker too.

I used to use the LMI white glue too and liked it. I tried the LMI yellow glue when they replaced the white glue with it and didn't like it. It had a bad tendency to draw out spiderweb-thin strands that got everywhere when trying to glue things up and I found that in some instances, it would leave a visible yellow line.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

One of the benefits of using OBG is that its long working time works well with torrefied wood.

Torrefied wood shares many properties with wood that has aged naturally for 100-300 years.

Because torrefied wood is hydrophobic, it is slow to absorb glue.

Torrefied wood also has a lower shear and peel strength than its non-torrefied counterpart.

OBGs long open time and low viscosity allows the glue to penetrate deeply enough to provide a good grip.

Faster cure glues will result in weaker glue joints because they only glue to the surface which exposes the torrefied woods mechanical weaknesses.

Stay away from "Old Brown Glue" it never really hardens. If you need longer open time with HHG. Add 10% salt by weight to HHG and mix it with water as usual.

Yeah, the squeeze-out is weird stuff. But it does dry hard like regular HHG if you reheat over a flame, so I think it's only a waterproof surface film preventing it from drying out, rather than something that affects the whole mass of glue. The glue inside the joint probably dries hard since it's such a thin layer.

OBG is HHG with urea added to extend open time.

Per the OBG web site FAQs:

--And--
--And--

Yes, that's exactly what the OBG web site states. A film dries over the squeeze-out preventing it from evaporating and drying completely.

Thanks for this, Jay. I was just thinking about trying this glue but did a quick search here first.


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Lol, this resurrected thread is making me want to grab a bottle of OBG…

I saw a YouTube video touring the Gib**n custom shop, where OBG (the bottle was being heated in a water filled glue pot) was being used to glue Les Paul tops onto the mahogany backs. Oddly enough, they were using regular HHG from a pot to glue on necks and fingerboards...I guess that must be the only correct way to do it

Dave

Much as I think Titebond and similar AR/PVA glues are primarily suitable for jigs and fixtures, for someone building for the first time without benefit of extensive infrastructure or on-site tutor, it's one less thing to obsess over. A first instrument should not be viewed as anything beyond a tool to learn the order of build, so certain components and processes may be safely deferred until later instruments.

Certain experiences must be had first-hand to get the maximum benefit from that event. Both of my daughters had to date a few losers and a few more also-rans to acquire the wisdom to recognize a winner. Most guys they dated were at best dinner and a movie material, and more often worth just a few minutes of their time to figure out that they were NOT worth more than those few minutes.

AR/PVA is a little like those also-ran guys... not suitable for a long-term relationship, but if in need of a date for a required social function (a first instrument build) or another person to round out a bar-trivia team (a quick repair or a jig or fixture) for the evening, worth the minor investment in time and interest required. Just don't get too attached or expect much beyond mere adequacy.

Based on having found your way here, I suspect there are a number of build and repair projects in your future, so focus on getting the build process down, then worry about refinements (to name just a few: glues, finishes, inlay, voicing, joinery, wood selection, fretwork, nut and saddle execution, setup). Get the first few instruments done and you'll be much better equipped to benefit from the 'which glue?' threads which will at some point surely consume far too much of your time.

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For the times they are a changin'

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