Thread: Titebond Liquid Hide Glue issues

Bump…

liquid hide glue in a bottle has always had a reputation for not being as good as the real thing. I read about it years ago when I went through a guitar building stage . The Luthiers steer clear of it for that reason . Ive never used it . Ive used plenty of hide glue . Standard joiners glue on furniture used form a glue pot and high grade Luthier glue shipped from the US and heated and used from a glue bottle . Never had a problem with it. Id throw the stuff in a bottle and never go back there again .

Hide glue is best made fresh. As an apprentice my job was to glean out the glue pot late in the day and cover new glue pearls with water to soak over night. In the morning I had to light a small fire and keep it going all day. The glue was kept to a temperature that was uncomfortable to put a finger into the hot glue. Later we acquired an electric glue pot, one hell of a relief.

Try using a electric iron to warm the offending, the glue may bond again, worth a try,

Jim

I make up hide glue using a repurposed rice cooker.
2 heat settings is helpful.
I got the hide glue from Restorers Choice - no connection - happy with the quality/bond.

I use a wax heater that beauticians use. They are circa $20 on ebay.

Titebond says: Storage Life: 24 months in tightly closed containers at 75°FDifficult to imagine a company like Titebond risking their reputation on a second-rate product so perhaps this bottle was older than realised (old stock at the retailer?) or had been left open at some time.

For glues that I don’t use frequently I write the purchase date on a piece of masking tape stuck on the bottle.

You can check the date of manufacture of Titebond by looking at the lot numbers on the bottle. The “decode” can be found here: Titebond

Regards,

Brian

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

I’m currently restoring an old writing slope at the Bundy Woodworking Guild and using Titebond hide glue as the original glue used was hide glue. Nearly 5 weeks ago I rebuilt the lid but this morning as I returned to the job I see that many joints have “sprung” slightly and the glue is tacky. The glue had definitely set hard before I went away. The workshop isn’t climate controlled and so is influenced by the relative humidity although the items were in a closed room.
So; my question is whether I should pull it all apart again and reglue with PVA or whether the problem is more the age of the glue and if I bought a new bottle this wouldn’t have happened. The bottle is about 12-18 months old and so was going to be tossed after this job anyway.

Thoughts please?

You didnt mention what sort of joints they were?

"The glue was old and going to be thrown out after the job" - have you checked the dates and has it expired?

I found this article which explores glue and wood failure with hide glue Hide Glue in Liquid Form | Popular Woodworking

Ive had a hide glue rubbed joint fail once.

If your gluing veneer then i dont think liquid hide will work

also here is how go read the batch number

Titebond

Originally Posted by Pac man

You didnt mention what sort of joints they were?

"The glue was old and going to be thrown out after the job" - have you checked the dates and has it expired?

The joints are half-blind dovetails for the box sides and lapped joints for the lid; it is the lap joints that have noticeably sprung although I noted that the dovetails had “bled” some of their glue.

There is no date stamp/batch number on the bottle so I can’t establish the DOM; I bought the bottle in early 2021 and reasoned that it would be nudging it’s stick-by date around now.

Anyhoo; I’ve decided to re-glue the whole thing again with proper hide glue. The hardware shop I bought the bottled stuff from is a U-Beaut stockist and has the pearls and today I ordered a wax pot from Fleabay to heat it with. That particular purchase raised the eyebrow of SWMBO who demanded to know what the flurble was I doing ordering depilatory equipment…

I’ll be in Gladstone for the next couple of weeks with work and so have decided to take it all with me and work on it during the evenings.

Thanks to everybody who has responded

I haven't used the product, but somewhere along the way of absorbing knowledge, I recall being advised that is a synthesised rather than naturally derived product with similar properties to hide glue, but that it is not fully compatible with existing hide glue in re doing joints. I don't have a basis or reference for this advice, but I suspect that if there is validity to it, cleaning failed traditional hide glue joints and attempting to re glue with liquid hide glue may not provide effective long term joints.