Glue from Garrett Wade

Not to throw a spanner in the works, but this is another glue which I have heard good things about and some friends use. Kerry Char is using it.

Contains a high solids content.

http://www.garrettwade.com/product.asp?pn=62J01.01

Anyone else used it????

I've never tried it myself. Have been leaning toward Norland's Fish glue for most things these days. But there's always places where good old Titebond works great, as well as LMI white.

The thing that gives me pause is the claims of great strength. That often describes a product that has a little flexibility to it like titebond 3. That could equal creep with the type of work we do. The thing about creep in a glue joint is most of the time it won't happen but when it does your sunk.

I've bought some 2002GF from Lee Valley. Compared to titebond orignal, it cured slower and was softer.

Chih-Wei Liu said:

I've bought some 2002GF from Lee Valley. Compared to titebond orignal, it cured slower and was softer.

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The glue the OP was referring to is "202 GF" not 2002GF. I don't know anything about this stuff but I just wanted to make sure everyone is talking about the same glue.

Glue thread! Glue thread!

Where's me popcorn...

The "hardness & chipping when hard" description is a positive quality in my understanding.
I'll be ordering another 2 years of hide glue though.

Moore Bettah Ukuleles said:

The glue the OP was referring to is "202 GF" not 2002GF. I don't know anything about this stuff but I just wanted to make sure everyone is talking about the same glue.

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2002 GF was originally named 202 GF at Lee Valley, IIRC. I thought they are the same stuff but I might be wrong.

Looks interesting as another alternative. Reading between the lines, the hardness is a plus factor unless that's offset by strength! That's one of the properties we like about HHG...it's hard and therefore seems to be acoustically transparent and not a damper.

Yer- the friend who uses it (a mate of The Fox (Charles) and Kerry Char's in Oregon) says he uses it in his builds together with HHG. Not sure what specific applications each is used for though- (see link below). He said he prefers this Garret wade glue over LMI or titebond for hardness and strength etc.
Ill be giving it a try for the price.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...9180880042&type=1&theater&notif_t=photo_reply

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

Yer- the friend who uses it (a mate of The Fox (Charles) and Kerry Char's in Oregon) says he uses it in his builds together with HHG. Not sure what specific applications each is used for though- (see link below). He said he prefers this Garret wade glue over LMI or titebond for hardness and strength etc.
Ill be giving it a try for the price.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...8169180880042&type=1&theater¬if_t=photo_reply

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Mark also states: "I don't particularly like LMI's glue. Out of six bottles I've tried five were bad."
So I'm not alone in getting bad bottles from LMI.

As well as building Ukes..I still do occasional Loudspeaker repair and reconing work...I've got three drivers on the go at the moment...I've lost count of the adhesives I use in the reconing process..All manufacturers have their own spec's and expect the repair guys to use the specified stuff ...Some recone kits come with adhesive supplied ..others you have to buy from the manufacturers in bulk...Most of these adhesives come from 3M's...A good one to look out for is "Black Tack 4105" from "Locktite" I use it for sealing the soldered connections in the speaker cones..it's a Black CA glue that looks like Jet and sets rock hard (great for inlay work i imagine) it's expensive tho.
http://uk.farnell.com/loctite/4105/adhesive-blacktak-2-part-kit/dp/537172

Yep- Black CA glue should get a noble peace prize for awesomeness.

Starbond sell good stuff

Timbuck said:

As well as building Ukes..I still do occasional Loudspeaker repair and reconing work...I've got three drivers on the go at the moment...I've lost count of the adhesives I use in the reconing process..All manufacturers have their own spec's and expect the repair guys to use the specified stuff ...Some recone kits come with adhesive supplied ..others you have to buy from the manufacturers in bulk...Most of these adhesives come from 3M's...A good one to look out for is "Black Tack 4105" from "Locktite" I use it for sealing the soldered connections in the speaker cones..it's a Black CA glue that looks like Jet and sets rock hard (great for inlay work i imagine) it's expensive tho.
http://uk.farnell.com/loctite/4105/adhesive-blacktak-2-part-kit/dp/537172

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Ken,
What adhesive do you use for gluing rubber surrounds to a metal frame? I have a driver that I like, and am committed to at this point, I have 3 of them. They have rubber surrounds. I had to recone one of them last Summer, I only half trust the glue I used. SO far it is still holding, but, in my tests it is not as strong as the adhesive used by the manufacturer, Ciare.

Beau Hannam Ukuleles said:

Yep- Black CA glue should get a noble peace prize for awesomeness.

Starbond sell good stuff

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The stuff from Starbond takes forever to dry. I've never found a need for it on ebony (and where else would you use it anyway?)

Can someone explain to me how a microscopic thin line of glue that has bonded two 'true' surfaces at a cellular level could have a damping effect? At the points of contact you have effectively homogenised the components which you then expect to act as one. A seam line of glue contributes no weight gain nor acts as a damper to the top that could be sensibly measured... it makes no sense to me whatsoever in the context of the 'case work' involved in making the body. If anything, flexibilty is to be desired isn't it? Am I missing something?

Moore Bettah Ukuleles said:

The stuff from Starbond takes forever to dry. I've never found a need for it on ebony (and where else would you use it anyway?)

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I'm not as neat an inlayer as you ;(

It does take ages to dry- ive been using an aerosol accelerant from a local Hobby Hut which is great- it hasn't foamed anything so far, thin, thick or black starbond and the spray is so fine that it is lasting longer then the 'normal' kind.

Let's just try rubber cement.

Pete, I guess you never saw a guitar with a Titebonded bridge that spent too many hours in the hot sun in the trunk of a car in LA.

OH, that's right, you don't get hot sun in Great Britain...

But if...just if...you ever saw that, you'd know from issues with Titebond. You'd know about a gummy glue that softens way earlier than you'd like to believe it does. You'd recognize the threads of re-"hardened" glue between bridge and top that are a dead tip-off that this is NOT a warranty job. You might even see not-so subtle shifts in overall instrument geometry like shifted braces...especially in the upper bout...where the glue softened, the wood moved, and then the glue cooled down with everything off just enough so the guitar needed a neck reset...and some serious internal work. The worst is when the upper transverse braces let go and you get this tectonic plate shift as cracks open up on either side of the fingerboard and that whole area shifts into the sound hole area. Now that is a bitch to fix, let me tell you...

I call this cold creep, even though it may be happening at somewhat elevated temperatures...like around 135 F...back of car, trunk of car, even outside in a black case on a hot stage at a summer festival gig.

The problems can extend to opening top center seams, too. The top gets hot, the wood shrinks, the glue line softens...what's next? Oh, an open top center seam. So glue it... With what? A glue that doesn't stick well to itself? Or maybe the top seam is not quite obviously open...it's just pulled apart a tiny bit with glue kind of in there...

This is what I'm talking about re. guitar repair being just so damned instructive. But if you studiously avoid doing general repair work, you never see this stuff. Out of sight, out of mind. Ignorance is bliss and all that rot.

I've seen too much Titebond failure, so yeah, I'm looking for alternatives whether they're antique glue of the pharaohs or the latest from the chem labs of the future.

This stuff you are talking about Rick happens all the time with HHG also, and I do repairs on a daily basis. No glue is going to do well with a guitar left in the car on a hot day. Your talking about abuse, not glue. I have had violins come into my shop in pieces still inside the case because of this hot/car problem. I just don't buy this argument. Any instrument put together with any glue that is treated well is not going to suffer this kind of damage.

I didn't hear any answer that Pete asked about the damping affect.

I don't see the same kind of failure with HHG as with Titebond. It's utter failure, not soften, creep, reconstitute. HHG doesn't soften and melt the way carpenter's glues do unless you apply moist heat. Dry heat doesn't do what I'm talking about. I have never seen HHG that got gummy with just dry heat...the conditions I'm talking about.

I have seen plywood top delamination, though, from the combination of a black top (Yamaha APX electro-acoustic) and direct sun on stage and that's with "modern" glues. That was a guitar on stage with the Beach Boys during one of their summer tours. Since all I had was 36 hours to get the guitar back on the road, I flooded it with superglue and pushed the top around the bridge down 'til it dripped glue out. Thank God the finish was polyester, so I could just clean up the mess with acetone. It worked...

As for damping...well, I hope I can get some data on this when I have time which won't be 'til this summer what with my being a musician again this spring; I'm playing South by South West in a month and then recording another album or at least starting one in April and May.

What I intend to do is to do a six to ten layer laminate with several types of glue with the layers all from the same plank and also have an identical, same billet piece of solid wood the same thickness and then check the numbers with a Lucchi Elasticity tester. If the glue tested is utterly acoustically transparent, the numbers should be the same or very close. If not...well, we'll see. There are several ways to run this, so I'll try several layups.

I think that if there is an issue with tone and glue, the worst joint to do with a softer damping glue would be top to rim where you actually have quite a bit of glue area. Next would be braces to top, then kerfing to sides, then top seam, etc., on down...