Hot Hide Glue Problem

[John Delacour]

At 09:01 -0700 26/10/07, David Ilvedson wrote:

>You quicken it up in microwave.   High setting 15 seconds at a 
>time...stirring, but glue pot always works for me.   Let is heat up 
>and stir...should be no tapioca....smooth like thick honey...it 
>should smell bad...mine doesn't...got from Schaff ages ago....

You all seem to be cooking the glue!  The way to prepare glue is to 
mix it with COLD water and cover it, about 1:1 by volume to start 
with, depending on what consistency you need.  Once all the water has 
been taken up by the glue it will melt to an even consistency once it 
is warmed up.  All this talk of stirring and stirring is quite 
irrelevant if you just think an hour or so ahead.

As to the consistency and the temperature, different jobs have 
different requirements and one of the many advantages of hide glue is 
that from a single product you can produce a glue for many different 
tasks.  However, whatever consistency and and temperature is used, 
the glue should never be "sticky", which would make it quite 
impractical.

I have no idea of American manufacturers' practices over the years 
but ALL the pianos I deal with are built with hide glue and I never 
use anything else except for certain permanent repair jobs on the 
case where an epoxy is more convenient.

JD