Glue?

Wookie

Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2018
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Location
Wisconsin
What kind of glue does everyone use? I've done many repairs on violins, violas and cellos over the years and the preference there is always hide glue. I've seen lots of guitar and uke pictures where I can see regular Titebond wood glues (as well as on sites for guitar and uke luthier materials).

Just curious if it matters with Ukes? We use the hide glue on the violin family so that the wood lets go instead of cracking in the event of major humidity or drying out. Also it's a lot easier to pop a top or a seam to do repairs on the ribs or bouts. I've seen what regular wood glue or Elmers can do to a violin and it's not pretty.

All my experiments into uke building have used regular wood glue, but I'm getting close to actually putting some stuff together that I'd like to actually work, so I thought I'd ask!
 
I use Titebond I, an aliphatic resin glue as do many others. I do not use Titebond II because of its water resistance that makes getting things apart even harder. I have nothing against using hide glues, I just have no experience with it. Others swear by it and I'm sure they will chime in with it many virtues. Like a lot of things in life, things have their advantages and disadvantages and you picks your poison and you lives with the consequences. I have disassembled ukes made using Titebond so it is possible, but it is much harder than if they had been glued with hide glue. Also to be considered is that ukuleles are not the same animals as violins. As I understand it (and I am not a violin maker), violins are almost designed to be taken apart as part of their life cycle and an aliphatic glue would be a terrible choice of glues. Ukuleles on the other hand are built to be as permanent as possible and to take a certain amount of abuse and to take a different string tension. Hide glue aficionados swear that glued joints are actually stronger than aliphatic glue joints and I have no reason to doubt them. So if I was you I would use the type of glue you are most comfortable with. I would not recommend using epoxy or CA glue however, although those glues can and are used. I use CA glue on my bindings by the way. Hope that helps a little bit and good luck.
 
Last edited:
I use CA glue on my bindings by the way. Hope that helps a little bit and good luck.


I am at the binding stage and am considering the CA glue method. Looking for tips. :)
 
Hide glue for everything except fret board to neck where I use epoxy. And CA for a few jobs like fret markers. On some timbers that I know don't work well with HHG I will use PVA, but that is pretty rare.
 
For various glue ups throughout the build, I use

Titebond original and 3 (green cap)
CA
Hide glue
Epoxy
 
I use tightbond red cap for the body
smiths epoxy for carbon fiber rod in neck
a different epoxy for fingerboard (from LMI for tropical woods)
thin CA for bindings.
Hide for parts of the top
Medium CA to gule carbon fiber bridge patch
 
Many years ago when I was a cabinet maker we used Animal Glue, yes we where not PC in those far off days. Then one day the boss brought some white glue into the factory. This'll never work we said. But it did and here I am forty years later still using it,
 
Using CA to bind on soft top woods is a bad idea. - if that thin ca gets into any of the end grain it stains horribly, and the solution is either a dark sunburst or a totally new top.
Same with ca for rosettes in softwood- not worth the risk of staining the end grain.
 
Using CA to bind on soft top woods is a bad idea. - if that thin ca gets into any of the end grain it stains horribly, and the solution is either a dark sunburst or a totally new top.
Same with ca for rosettes in softwood- not worth the risk of staining the end grain.

This is absolutely true. However, a quick coat of shellac to the end grain completely solves this problem and there is no staining whatsoever. It works. I do two coats just for safety but one coat will work. Let dry 5 minutes. Never had a problem. I use a thinned 1.5 pound shellac prep, a small brush and then thin (#10 CA glue). What Beau say is true and if you don't seal with shellac it will ruin your top.
 
I find this staining with CA interesting. I have used thin CA hundreds of times on spruce for bindings and rosettes and have never had any staining, not once. Just finished a guitar with a spruce top and used CA for the bindings and rosette, looks great. I don't doubt others experience but I had no problems. Go figure.
 
I wonder a little whether the staining with CA around bindings and rosettes is more related to the purfling used. I have found that CA readily dissolves the black stain used to make black purfling (at least a number of kinds I have used) and I wonder whether it is this black stain that is being carried into the softwood. I always seal with shellac and have not had problems, but messing around with test pieces and the like I have seen what appears to dissolved stain being carried by CA wicking into softwood.
 
I glued the tape strips quite solidly to the top and sides and it was a pain to remove.

Yup! Been there done that. When the CA mixes with the glue on the binding tape it creates something like hard bubble gum. It has to be scraped and then sanded away. A lot of work. The solution is not letting the CA wick up your binding tape. To do this, I carefully tack down the binding with a little CA on either side of the tape, hit it with accelerator and then remove each piece of tape in turn and glue the binding down in that spot. The CA never gets on the tape. No extra work...
 
This is great stuff! Exactly what I'm looking for. I had looked at Robbie O'Brien's tips on the CA glue binding idea. But as is often the case, they are things either assumed or not addressed in teaching resources that a rookie can miss. And I don't want to do that.
 
The only purflings I have used on a regular basis I bought from Stew-Mac. I have glue as many as six b/w strips together with thin CA at one time and have never had them bleed into each other or into the spruce.
 
Top Bottom