Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello all --

I seem to spend a fair percentage of my build time mitigating, removing, and cleaning up glue sqeeze out. I must admit, it's not one of my favorite tasks, and I figured the combined wisdom of fellow OLFers might shed some light on this sticky subject.

Each technique I try seems fraught with its own drawbacks -- minimizing sqeeze out risks compromising the joint, wiping it off with a damp rag introduces moisture into the wood, and chiseling/scraping/sanding afterwards is incredibly time consuming and frustrating.

What are your techniques? So far, the most promising thing I've found has been Hesh's hhg tutorial -- rolling off the sqeezed out boogers before the stuff fully kicks. I'll probably eventually go to this for braces, but in the meantime, what can one do to deal with good ol' Titebond?

Thanks in advance.

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Wait until it cures to a leathery consistency...15-20 minutes and then clean up with a chisel. Sure it's time consuming...but the results are worth the effort to produce a nice and clean surface.

BTW...look at Hesh's tutorial again. Using HHG for braces is a breeze...try it. Save the Titebond for your large carpentry projects.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

For Titebond, I wait until it is of a leather like consistency then remove it with a chisel or a chisel shaped piece of wood. Final cleanup is still water on a rag.

Al

Yep I never clean up till titebond is leathery. doing it early just leads to smearing it where you don't want it to go. With this in mind I try to place go-bars so that they do their job but still allow access to clean up the squeeze-out.

I use the LMI white, and wait about an hour or so. Once its dry, but not fully cured, I use a 1/4" chisel and run it down each side of the brace. The glue droplets just pop right off, I try not to smear any glue when it is wet as that makes it a bit harder to get off.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

One of the tricks that I recently learned on my own was to wait until you have removed all the go-bar sticks. Then move your top to a comfortable work place and you can get at all the brace angles very easy. I just got sick of dealing with them, so I started to wail an hour or so to clean up. That way I can get out of the tangled mess of bend fiber rods

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

What these guys said plus there's always De-Glue-Goo which does a fabulous job of dissolving visible water based glue whether it's HHG, LMI white, or Titebond.

   http://www.de-gluegoo.com/

The stuff is fantastic.

That tip thanks to Cat Fox of Sound Guitar Repair in Seattle.

Someone, I can't recall who, suggested using McDonald's straws for clean up.  They are nice and stiff and fairly large.  Pinch one edge, to make a corner.  The glue goes into the straw.  I am not speaking from experience here.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Great advice, guys. You're the best!

Is LMI's hhg as good as any other?

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

The straw trick works well. Just take a strat and cut it at an angle to creat a point. Then just run the point alont the glued up wood and it picks up execss glue pretty well.

Philip

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aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

Yup, I use the straw method too. Cut a 45 degree angle into the straw and run the point into the corner. Squeeze the straw into a paper towel to get the glue out or trim off 1/2" for a clean section of straw. This technique works better for titebond and HHG and works best when you wait 5-10 minutes.

The problem I have with waiting an hour and chiseling is that I forget too often and come in the next day to find that I have some serious work ahead of me. That's not a critique of the technique but it makes the technique a bit less useful for me.

I learned a tip from Frank Finnochio about using titebond:

Use a small bottle to disperse your glue and then when you have enough glue on the piece use your little finger (pinkey finger) to spread it out (wipe your finger across the glue like a squeegee). This way, most excess glue is wiped away before you have do deal with it as squeezeout. Keep a piece of blue tape on the corner of your workbench to wipe yout little finger on. You usually dont use your little finger for this kind of work anyway, so just keep it curled up and out of the way until your work is clamped. What little bit of glue that is on your finger will peel off really easy in a few minutes. I have so little squeezeout using this method that it is hardly worth talking about. What little bit there is will pop right off with a light scrape of a 1/4" chisel after it has dried.

I tend to use a lot less glue also.

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Reguards,

Ken H

[QUOTE=ToddStock] FWIW, I buy high clarity 192G hide glue from Tools for Working Wood...$6.95/lb or $31.95 for 5 lbs. Given that it all comes from Milligan and Higgins in 50 lb drums anyway, you'll pay $4 less per lb and get the same stuff as Behlen, LMI, SM, and others are selling.

Here's the link for Tools for Working Wood.[/QUOTE]

I just bought two pounds. I could not believe how fast that stuff got to me. Nice place, great prices and I appreciate you posting it in an earlier thread.

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

For remembering clean up, etc., get a simple kitchen timer and set it to go off in however much time you want to let the glue sit before you clean it up. Ditto for taking parts out of clamps and doing the next round.

Ditto the kitchen timer. I'm sitting here listening to mine tick-tick-tick its way to the bell. 2 more coats of polyester to go tonight...

They cost little, but they're handy. I even use mine when taking a mid-day nap; lay on the couch, and give it a twist just before dozing-off. I can twist it to 20 minutes, give or take 2, without looking up <g>

Great advice from everyone. Thank you. I'm definitely giving hhg a try. Where is titebond preferable over hhg, or vice versa? Perhaps bindings, where one needs longer working time, and the outside corners are easier to clean up?

I'm one who can't wait for the stuff to go leathery, cause I've usually moved on to something else, forgetting entirely. Looks like I'm swiping the timer from the kitchen. Great idea.

I think I also just need to refine my application technique to get just enough on there to ensure a strong joint, while also getting better at getting things in place before the glue seeps into the wood. So much to learn. At least when I need a break from the precision and attention to detail, I can go make some sculpture.

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com