Official Luthiers Forum!

Howdy,

Has anyone used the white glue LMI
offers?

Any comments on it's strength.

I would like to not use hide glue
on the vihuela.

best,
Hank

Search the archives and you will find quite long and heated discussions on
this topic. In short, some people love it and have used it tons with awesome
results. Some (myself included) have used it and had horrible results. I did
a lot of side by side tests with LMI, titebond, and hide glue. Hide glue beat
them all, titebond was second and the lmi glue failed me every time. But it
could have been my technique, or just my luck, as others have had great
success with it.

_________________
John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Thanks John,

I'll do that, I guess I could just buy a bottle
and do some testing myself.

I feel that hide glue is the best, but to me,
it's a pain to use.

Thanks much, and if you know the Hamerick
family, thats my uncle and aunt.

Best,

Hank Cross

John, you mentioned LMI white failed you every time?? Don't you recommend it on your video series?
I've been using titebond forever until I watched your "rims" DVD the other day and darned if I just didn't order 2 bottles of the LMI yesterday.
Just my luck, however, what do you mean by "failed you everytime? Did the guitar come apart?

I have always had good luck with it. I have never had a joint fail.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I may have recommended it when I thought it was just my own doing (it still
may have been, although I don't believe that) and not the glues fault. But as
I stated above LOTS of others have had wonderful success with it, so don't
let me scare you off. By all means try it for yourself. It does dry harder, and
clearer than titebond and that is a plus (the man reasons for me trying it in
the first place), but if you search the archives you'll see a very long post by
me about my whole ordeal with LMI's glue....

_________________
John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

I used to use LMI all the time and had absolutely no problems with it at all, never had a joint failure with LMI white.

I now use HHG for all of my joints. However, have a look at the recent Fish Glue thread, I have some of this and, with the minimal experimentation I have done, I like it very much. A number of the builders here that I admire very much use it, as do the luthiers and piano techs here at the RCM. Treat it like titebond/LMI.

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

The best, if you consider the ease of use and no preparation, compared to HG.
It dryes very hard, crystaline in nature. It is my understanding that, in terms of adverse effect on tone. HG is the only adheasive that ranks above LMI in the Least adverse effects-and just by a whisker
Keep in fridge and fill smaller bottle to use for your work. Only my 2 cents-and almost worth that much bob J39089.2162615741

I have used LMI white and I loved it for soft wood to soft wood joints (i.e. braces to top). I did however run into a little problem while gluing an endblock... (must of been my doing).

I have started using fish glue and the stuff is amazing. Like HG but with a much longer working time (1 hour+). Not as easy to clean up as gelled HG, but with all of the great attributes. Very strong bond (3200lbs?) and dries crystal hard.

HG and fish glue are the only two glues I use now.

_________________
I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

hard to believe we serve colored HHG to kids as a treat... isn't it?   

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=bighank] Thanks John,

I feel that hide glue is the best, but to me,
it's a pain to use.
[/QUOTE]

With this being the case, your best option is fish glue. It has all of the things we desire in hide glue, but is much more user friendly.

_________________
Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
Web: https://www.jfrenchguitars.com/

Just thought it might be worth mentioning here that I just got a new Garrett Wade catalog in which they have two new PVA glues listed. One is a high solids glue that is supposed to do well with gap filling, and the other is a long open time glue.

Some accomplished guitar makers give high marks to Lee Valley's PVA glue. Much better than Titebond, they say.

I'm thinking I better check out this fish glue...

_________________
Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

I'm a convinced user of HHG for it's proven strength with the test of time and now ease to use for me but i must admit that the next time i'll be glueing top or back plates to rims, i'll seriously consider Lee Valley's Fish glue for the open time although making dry runs with HHG was not that hard, just needed good mental prep!

Hesh said "Yeah and it's the only application where HHG fails, the kids mouths keep flapping anyway........."[/QUOTE]

Dave Rickard39089.4646643519

_________________
Say what you do, Do what you say.

I've never once had any issues with LMI white glue. It's great stuff.

There's so much emotion behind glues in lutherie that it is almost funny. Traditionalists won't use anything but hide glue, while others will use Titebond for everything and sell tons of guitars. Partly it's perspective, but the merits of some glues over others are worth looking at IMO, FWIW, WMNBM.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I had a bridge on my first kit built guitar shift after gluing with LMI glue but it was DEFINITELY user error. I did not leave it clamped long enough. Second try no problems and just bought another bottle.

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

I had a similar experience to John about six months ago. Here is the
scenario:

I was gluing up my neck blanks. I cut down the middle and reverse the
grain for strength. I use a Minimax jointer for this process. This
particular machine I had the surfaces ground down at a machine shop
and the result is that the tables are perfectly flat. The jointer uses Tersa
knives which automatically set themselves to within a tolerance of a
couple 0.001". The knives were brand new. I get simply phenomenal
results with this jointer - as good as any hand plane will give you.

I always glue within a few minutes of preparing the joint. I used a brand
new bottle of LMII white glue. This is a mindless glue up that takes
absolutely no skill to do - there was no chance of error on my part. The
next day, after I unclamped the necks, both necks had some gaps
develop in a few areas. It probably would have been okay structurally but
I decided to redo with titebond. The titebond joint was flawless.

Until that point, I had great success with LMII's glue but that event
destroyed my confidence in the stuff. I know that Titebond will work
everytime, which is why is use it over LMII glue. However, I am seriously
looking into fish glue and I use hide glue for gluing bridges.



SimonF39089.5296296296

I use LMI white for almost everything.... for some reason (like Simon) my laminated necks don't do good with it. I can't figure out why but I have also been using Titebond for necks. LMI white hides better in the joints than Titebond (less visible).

_________________
Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

I Like it a LOT!!! I have never used HHG so I can't compare. Why do I like it?

1. Dries fast. You can hold small pieces firmly in place by hand for a minute or so, then clamp. They won't move on you... not even a little.

2. Dries clear! It works very well for repairs. it is so clear you only see wood.

3. Dries hard. Seems to have no accoustic effect and no creep.

I use titebond when I need a longer open time. Once LMI White is spread thin you need to join the parts within seconds or you will have problems.

_________________
Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Check out Hoadley's book on wood technology: no other way of preparing a wood joint comes close to a hand plane.

                       Paul

Hey Yawl,

I found Fish glue in squeeze bottles late last night
on the net, would this stuff be any good or do you have to cook it yerself?



best,

Hank Cross

The subject of glue is one where little reliance should be placed on anecdotal accounts of joint failure. There are many reasons a joint can fail, but most everyone likes to conclude that it was the fault of the glue, or in some case the acetone wipe. Since of course it couldn't be anything to do with their technique, but I've noticed that when one gets the details of the failed joint, there is usually room for an alternative explanation. Put another way, one, or several instances of a certain outcome does not make for a controlled scientific experiment. Especially when other people report conflicting results, one should look for uncontrolled variables and alternative causes. [To John Mayes credit, he acknowledges this and is careful in what he claims about LMI glue]. We need always to keep in mind Feynman's warning that the easiest person to fool is yourself when drawing conclusions from some observed result.

I tried to make this simple point on another forum several months ago, and the moderator attempted to ridicule it and distort it wildly into the "silly" claim that no one should offer the group the results of their own experience. As a result of seeing that contempt for good science by the person in charge, I left the forum.

As for LMI white, I have had nothing but good results.

[edit] Simon, you illustrate my point. When I read, "no chance of error on my part," I thought you were joking and that the story would lead up to how you found your mistake, after all. Believe me, there is always the chance for error on your or my or anyone's part. Your technique was assumed to be infallible, ergo it had to be the fault of the glue. But what you describe--gaps in the joint-- is almost certainly caused by your jointing or clamping technique. Probably the latter. How do you imagine that the glue caused gaps? Did you test your hypothesis by seing if the results were repeatable with another joint using LMI? That was a rhetorical question . Google Feyman's lecture "Cargo Cult Science." He of course puts it better than me.Howard Klepper39090.6195138889

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I always like to read a discussion on the values and uses of different glues. I think as modern luthiers we should look at the history of why certain glues (and woods) were used but be open to new products and ideas. HHG was the pinnacle of high technology when Stradivarius and later Torres did their amazing work. These masters could probably have used library paste and acheived good results. (Remember grade school? that was the glue we used to eat in art class.) The answer will not likely be obtained in our life times. We will be judged on our workmanship and glue choices by future generations if our guitars stand the test of time.

_________________
Greg
http://garibaldiinstruments.com/