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So like the title says school me on the fish glue! Pros & Cons of fish glue for instruments? Pva glue I’m familiar with, hide glue I know about, but have no knowledge of fish glue other I’ve seen it mentioned and I know Stew Mac sales it’s.

Fish glue is a protein based glue like hide glue except it's naturally liquid at room temperature and has a very long open time. Some worry about it's use in hot high humidity conditions, but hey if it holds fish together in the tropics how bad can it be . I've successfully used it on binding where I like the long open time, I've also used Old Brown Glue (liquid hide glue) in that application and like it too. Lately I've just been adding some urea or salt to my hide glue mix to increase the open time of my hot hide glue mix.
To me I'd equate it as similar to Old Brown Glue, which in my opinion is superior to titebonds liquid hide glue. I suspect this is primarily a freshness thing but don't know.
Get some and play with it, see what you think. Glue up a variety of joints an break em and mimic some extreme environments.
Good luck.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

My go to glue for most things. If i was in a more production oriented shop, I'd probably use hide glue more. But I just can't justify the learning curve and maintaining a glue pot for occasional use. Fish glue is an easy go to for me. It has a higher release temperature, as I understand it. So I do use hide glue for things like setting a dovetail neck joint, or other things that I want to release. But fish glue is always there and ready to go. Longer open working time is what I really like.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

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Tony Thatcher
Bozeman, Montana

Humidity hmm I wonder is this like you take your guitar on trip to Houston and in a few days all the soundboard braces pop off or is this more like long term exposure? With a long open time does that mean no rub joints?

This will be difficult for some here to hear but we do not think that Fish is interchangeable with HHG everywhere.

We used it around 15 years ago for about a year to reglue bridges and a whole manner of things. Norland fish glue bought fresh and date code checked from Norland and pitched every year.

Out of the 20 or so bridge reglues we did that year nearly all of them failed in only several years. We were so disappointed that we proactively contacted the non-failed-bridge owners and offered to redo theirs with HHG and we did some of that too.

We are in Michigan and run a very high volume dedicated repair shop with no music store affiliation. We only do service nothing else and are swamped right now beyond any level we have ever seen prior. We also guarantee our work and even more importantly we have an innate sense of right and wrong that guarantees aside if we could have done something better we will launch and make it right. That's how we roll.

I mention some of these non-glue related things because the fish failures that we experienced were one of the worst things that ever happened to our business.... We simply cannot have work of ours out there that is not going to provide heirloom value and be a great example of best practices.

So although it rains here it is not all that rainy and fish did not stand up well to our environment with an application that is already perhaps the most difficult glue joint on the entire guitar because of RH and temp swings, bridges.

We went back to HHG and never had another failed bridge reglue.

Our process for regluing bridges is pretty involved too and at least two dozen OLFers saw it in person when at our shop. We expand the gluing area, are religious about HHG handling and timing, and have everything in place and clamped in 10 seconds or less with perfect mating surfaces. We did the same things that mattered with fish but the joints failed in higher humidity exposures.

Wanted to add that the classical crowd likes fish and some like rub joints. To each their own.

A steel string has significantly more tension than a classical and we found fish to not stand up to all it has to do with steel strings in our climate.

We found two things contributed to our fish bridge failures, duration of high RH exposure and the thing being under tension, string tension. But your thinking is valid Slim fish may keep fish together in the sea but it does not keep bridges on guitars well in Michigan.

I would use it for rosettes, binding, etc. but actually I would prefer other glues for those things too these days just to be sure since Ohio is forecasted to be coastal property in the coming years....

Yeah that’s why I’m asking it’s seems like it’s a slight gamble with the fish and I don’t like gambling. Seems like HHG and PVA are much more reliable.

I think I read on a post here a while back that fish glue discolors joints, so not good for light woods????

Maintaining the typical glue pot would not work for me either, but still I prefer hide glue for some things (bridges and braces). That is why I put the glue in small plastic bottles and heat them in a water bath rather than use a glue pot. The small size of the plastic bottles allows the glue to heat up relatively quickly and also allows the unused portion to be refrigerated or frozen until needed again. I will have several bottles on hand filled with dry glue granules ready to have water added and warmed up as needed.
I do live in an area where high humidity is common, and hearing of other's experiences with fish glue makes me reluctant to try it.

That’s all I need to know to make my mind up! Loose bridges, discolored joints, & can’t handle humidity yikes stuff ought to be banned! Glad I asked before trying.

No fish use for anything other than repair work where the long open time was a necessity, hide glue use was not a feasible course of action, and subsequent finish touch-ups would mitigate fish's sensitivity to high RH.

For bridges, we used 315g HHG, dealing with the very short gel time by heating the bridge prior to glue-up and getting things closed and clamped as quickly as possible.

We did not consider Titebond to be anything other than a joint contaminant in luthiery work (i.e., hot creep, cold creep, poor reglue properties, and horrible cleanup), and so limited use to jigs, fixtures, or to illustrate the avoidable consequences of bad life choices.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Great piece of factual info, thanks Hesh.

Although fish is my go-to glue for a lot of (most) repairs, because it’s so easy and convenient to use, I never used it for bridges because warnings like Hesh's, heard from quite a few reliable sources over the years are always flashing a light in my head. I just won't try it on a high-stress area. Whereas I use fish most of the time for cracks, braces, hard to reach areas, bridge plate overlays, etc. The stuff is always ready.

And whenever I mix a batch of HHG for a bridge reglue, I’ll use it for whatever I have to do that day.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

I have been using fish glue for about 10 years. I still use hhg on bridges but love the open time of fish glue. Fish glue is not like other glues and I use 24 hr clamp time on it.
I don't like to mix glues so I won't use fish on other glues in repairs. All fish glue failures I had were when I mixed it. The only differnce is on HHG I use hot water to reactivate the HHG and then use the fish.

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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

When going in for a repair can one determine whether it’s a hhg joint or a fish glue joint? Like with a loose brace repair? So hhg & fish don’t play well together correct?

Thanks Hesh; it's good to have real experience from the trenches.

I use fish glue for binding, but that's about it. I had tried it for gluing down the fingerboard extension on a bolt-on neck, but found it much harder to get loose than HHG in an application where I want 'enough' adhesion but no more. To each his own, but I'd advise against it for anything structural.

The experience I had with liquid hide glue years ago makes me skeptical about it in any incarnation. I have not tried 'Old Brown Glue', but once burned is twice shy.

I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, but I have gotten pretty good at mixing and melting a small batch of hot hide glue for every job, right before I need it. This way, I can add the right amount of water for the job (some jobs need runny glue; others need thicker glue), and I can add the right amount of urea for the job (none for parts I can stick together in a few seconds; some if it takes up to a minute; more if it takes longer than a minute). Its the only adhesive I use on the actual guitar for gluing the parts together. When repairs will be needed in the future, there won't be any guessing about what was used to build the thing.

Titebond and CA glue are handy for building jigs, and epoxy (the right kind of epoxy) is awesome as a pore filler. I don't use any of them for gluing guitar parts together, though.

I did this experiment over 7 years ago. Glued two pieces of walnut together. The surface of the joint was approximately 3x3 inches. I have left this piece of wood in my attic loft where I store wood to dry and season. Here in Virginia we get RH's of 90% in the summer and in the attic it gets well over 100 deg F.

The wood is still perfectly glued together after enduring that for 7 years.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rqshaPvpELKu4ggY6

Commercial "Fish Glue" has additives such that with this type of preparation, much like "liquid hide glue", will remain liquid at room temperature. Both fish scale/bone/cartilage glue and the higher quality isinglass (glue) are best prepared from their flake and/or granular form. In this manner, they are prepared in a similar fashion as hot hide glue and are of much superior quality (than their commercial offerings) however with a significantly lower bloom strength than the higher bloom hide glues (they max out around 200 bloom). They will harden when dried and become fluid again when heated in a double-boiler, just as HHG does.

Doc

*Photos show a batch of scale/bone/cartilage glue in it's flake state and having been cooked and cooled. I should note that in stating it "hardens when dried" I simply mean it becomes a solid state. It is quite similar to HHG.

I've been using Lee Valley fish glue for 8 years or more. The open time isn't that long. Its really Sticky. Dries clear, cleans up with water.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

there are many using fish glue with no issues Wayne Henderson been using it for years . Not all fish glue is the same and it does take some different clamp techniques.
Most failures I Have seen were from bad joinery and on reglues . It seems to glue well on HHG as both are drying glues it doesn't like to glue on top of tite bond . I use it mostly on braces and closing the box.
I use Norland high tack

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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 failures with fish glue are limited to trying to glue walnut bridges to wrc tops. I/ve used fish to glue backs an tops bridges , linings bracing , an binding.A lot depends on the quality of your . glue and the environment you are building in My red line is 45%. I also use hhg , ca white glue titiebond etc315 hhg is my preferred bridge glue. On wrc bridges are glued with titebond 1

Interesting I didn't know that fish glue came in a solid flake form similar to HHG.

As for HHG my standard procedure for it is to use salt to extend the open time and I now use that formula for everything. I could never be fast enough to glue a bridge on without some extra time. I used to like to use Fish to glue backs on for the open time but now with my HHG formula I can use it there too.

Coming out of the world of violin lutherie, I have been using flake prepared Hot Fish Glue for more than 20yrs now. I'm not sure if all shops use it, but the Hungarian shop I worked in did, so it was the norm for me. I've tried the commercial stuff and found it to differ from the HFG in such a manner that I wasn't used to and didn't find much benefit to for my practices (I cook fresh HHG every day so making up fresh HFG is nothing more than a few extra minutes weighing out materials) so I've just stuck with HFG. I have been sourcing mine for some time out of Europe (I'm in Canada) as I have only found true isinglass from there so it's just tacking on an extra product when I order.

Doc

I first used Fish Glue on the Romanillos guitar making course in 2001, and continued to use it for about 10 years on from that point before taking a hiatus from guitar making. The stuff I was using came from Kremer Pigments and I've never run into any problems from it in any of my guitars that I know of. I even strung one up once only an hour after gluing the bridge on.

Nowadays I usually use HHG and Titebond depending on the application (plus CA, Epoxy, and Polyurethane glues for certain things). I also use the StewMac fish glue for making rosettes and anywhere I want a long open time, but I can tell you it is definitely not the same stuff as what I used to get from Kremer. The Kremer stuff never had the open time or the clamping time of the StewMac fish glue. For the most part, I now use HHG where I once used fish glue.

I still have the guitar from 2001 which was made primarily with fish glue and it has held up well.

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Instagram: @jfrenchluthier