Titebond over Titebond repair work or Titebond as main repair glue?

[Stephen M. Faulk]

I'm curious to hear opinions and experience on the topic of Titebond being used as the repairers main working glue.

I am a hide glue person and I use maybe 80% hide glue and 10% Titebond or some white glue in the shop or while building guiars. I do not use Titebond very much at all as a repair glue. In the some cases I will, but seldom. I'm kind of fanatical about that.

How does Titebond seem to you as a glue you can use to reglue a joint, seam, bridge etc. that has failed? Where and when do you go to a non hide glue in repair work? ....not counting something like using CA on a chipped ebony part etc. How do you like regluing Titebond over Titebond or are you of the opinion that white and yellow glues must be evicted from seams and joints?

Please get as forensic and technical as it requires, it's a glue nerd topic.

Just curious for opinions to think about. I've been using hide hide forever and am pretty much in that camp, so I don't really want to set up a counter argument. I'm looking for reasoned out opinion based on user experience and whether or not you are a full time repair person or a repair once in a while user.

And cite any good professionally written article or PM it to me please.

[Todd Stock]

For a failed joint where the failure occurs primarily in the adhesive layer (a cohesive failure...glue left on both sides of the joint), the type of glue used matters. Titebond is a thermoplastic, curing glue - it crosslinks as it dries - so trying to reglue a failed Titebond or other AR/PVA glued joint where the failure occurred in the glue line works poorly because the ability of the new adhesive to bond to the old is limited. While bonding can be improved by abrading the surface of the old, dead Titebond, the best strategy is to remove the old glue and then reglue.

Where the failure occurred in the substrate (in the wood adjacent to the bond), fresh Titebond can be used to reglue.

In summary, a good glue for jigs and fixtures, but a poor substitute for oth

So the bigger question: why bother to use Titebond in the first place? Titebond has relatively poor initial tack (skitters all over the place until the glue line is thinned), has short open time (with properly warmed surface), cleans up poorly, hinders repairs, and - in poorly done joints - shows a urine-yellow glue line that is very unattractive. Hot hide or fish are easier to use, easier to clean up, do not cold or hot-creep at reasonable temps, and hold better to slightly contaminated, lower energy surfaces than AR/PVA.

I'm a build-and-repair pro and I wrote this, so there you go . For more, Chris Schwartz's 'The Anarchist's Design Book' has a decent article on why Titebond should be held in low regard, or search for any of the 15,381 hide glue-versus-Titebond threads on Official Luthier's Forum, Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum, Acoustic Guitar Forum, etc. Most boil down to "I think Titebond's mother is weird and dresses him funny for school." or "I only know how to use Titebond, so it must be good stuff." but there have been some good threads that actually cover the pros and cons with some clarity.

[Barry Daniels]

Using hide glue to repair a guitar originally built with Titebond, or something worse, seems a bit presumptuous, even though I often do it. Although not as strong as hide glue, Titebond is plenty strong and durable enough for guitars. Damage on guitars is seldom the sole result of glue failure. My point is that Titebond is fine for repairs with the sole exception of regluing an opened seam that was originally glued with hide glue.

[Bob Gramann]

I am primarily a builder (working on number 122 now) but occasionally do repairs. For building, I use HHG on most joints. I use LMI's PVA glue on the heel and scarf joints on the neck and most of the joints on the rim with the hope that it will creep less than Titebond and the appreciation of its longer open time than HHG. (I have been experimenting with HHG for these joints.) I use CA only for inlay and fills. For repair, I use HHG wherever possible. If I'm repairing a joint that was originally made with a PVA, and if I can't clean it out throughly (vinegar is good if the joint is open), I'll usually reglue with Titebond and hope it holds. If it doesn't, I'll be more aggressive on the cleanup and reglue again with Titebond.

The short version, Titebond for open time or convenience where the joint doesn't matter, LMI PVA for open time where creep might be an issue, and HHG for everything else.

[Eric Knapp]

Please excuse my ignorance and help me learn. When you say Titebond do you mean just the brand or a type of glue? There are other glues out there, like LMI's instrument glue, that say they are better.

Thanks,

-Eric

[Bob Gramann]

In my post, Titebond was explicitly Titebond. LMI PVA is their instrument glue. I don't use different brands of PVA not because another brand might not be good, but because I don't have enough experience with it know what results I'll get long term. I learned about creep in Titebond the hard way. I try to avoid hard lessons. The LMI instrument glue is new but I'm trusting LMI's testing. I hope that I'm not learning things I don't want to know about it 10 years from now.

[Eric Knapp]

In my post, Titebond was explicitly Titebond. LMI PVA is their instrument glue. I don't use different brands of PVA not because another brand might not be good, but because I don't have enough experience with it know what results I'll get long term. I learned about creep in Titebond the hard way. I try to avoid hard lessons. The LMI instrument glue is new but I'm trusting LMI's testing. I hope that I'm not learning things I don't want to know about it 10 years from now.

Thanks. I learned about cold creep from making furniture with Titebond. It didn't take long before you could feel all the joints. I switched to West System epoxy and those joints are still smooth after decades. Now I'm trying to use the wisdom of this group to start out with a better chance at doing it right the first time.

-Eric

[Jim McConkey]

Please excuse my ignorance and help me learn. When you say Titebond do you mean just the brand or a type of glue?

When luthiers talk about Titebond they specifically mean Titebond Original, and specifically NOT Titebond II or Titebond III. Although some have had luck with the latter, the general consensus is that they never harden completely. Our New Builder's FAQ has some basic glue information at the bottom.

[Eric Knapp]

When luthiers talk about Titebond they specifically mean Titebond Original, and specifically NOT Titebond II or Titebond III. Although some have had luck with the latter, the general consensus is that they never harden completely. Our New Builder's FAQ has some basic glue information at the bottom.

Great to know, thanks! Learning the vocabulary one term at a time.

-Eric

[Mark Fogleman]

The only way to reactivate an AR/PVA glue joint in my experience is with heat. This was a bubbled loose headstock veneer where I injected Titebond original into a very small drilled hole into the bubble from a tuner hole and used a clothes iron on low setting to get the old glue to re-activate. This is not something i would use on a stressed joint. The commercial clothes iron cleaner works ok on cooked on Titebond BTW. I also use the original Titebond Extend to give enough wiggle room for attaching/reattaching top and bottom plates and HHG for all other clean wood joints for building/repairs.

I do not use AR/PVA glues to repair complex neck breaks but use liquid HG or Fish glue to allow time for adjustment. A white vinegar bath, stiff detail bushes and dental tools are the best approach to getting back to clean wood for a decent glue joint for previously repaired neck breaks where AR/PVA glues were used (A pox on your house if you do this).

I use the high clarity HHG from here:https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... -HIDEGL.XX for top cracks

[Todd Stock]

While it might seem odd to make repairs on a guitar using hide or fish (or CA) built with Titebond, but it's always an improvement. Failed bridges - either due to glue line failure or hot creep - is common, and a reglue with 315g hide settles the issue. I'm not certain that - other than a reglue on a lacquer-over pick guard, I ever use Titebond...why build in an issue?

[David King]

When I was very young, I was given a book on building balsa, solid wing, hand thrown gliders used in competition. The wings in these gliders are carved and sanded as a single plank and the cut into four sections that are mitered and glued to form the dihedral (perhaps it's called quad-hedral or multi-hedral when there is more than one angle. My point is that these joints are butt-glued end grain using titebond and the trick is to dope the end grain with water thinned titebond which you let dry and then reactivate with a second application. The system worked, you could walk on those wings and the end grain butt joints held like nobody's business. Not sure what that adds to this discussion but it's a facet of titebond I've never heard anyone else discuss.

[Todd Stock]

For cabinet makers, the rule is apply Titebond to both surfaces, which might be more about porous end-grain leaving too little glue in the joint than how the stuff wets out. It does hold pretty well, and I still use it for lots of cabinet work, jigs, fixtures, and stuff that does not need a lot of stability under stress. For hide or fish, it seems unnecessary, but I still do it on casework (the cleanup prior to finishing is so much less with hide...no need to add UV stuff!) and on stuff like fretboards, bridges, or other large, area glue-ups.

[Stephen M. Faulk]

When I was very young, I was given a book on building balsa, solid wing, hand thrown gliders used in competition. The wings in these gliders are carved and sanded as a single plank and the cut into four sections that are mitered and glued to form the dihedral (perhaps it's called quad-hedral or multi-hedral when there is more than one angle. My point is that these joints are butt-glued end grain using titebond and the trick is to dope the end grain with water thinned titebond which you let dry and then reactivate with a second application. The system worked, you could walk on those wings and the end grain butt joints held like nobody's business. Not sure what that adds to this discussion but it's a facet of titebond I've never heard anyone else discuss.

Polyhedral, I used to build those planes too. When the wing drops from the top of the fuselage it's Anhedral --- Nice story.

I don't doubt Titebond can glue over itself if you are using it fresh to stopper up end grain and then glue the joint or seam within 30 minutes of letting that dry to the touch. The problem I want to get at it is regluing Titebond 5 or 10 years later or more long after the glue has any contact open time due to it being rewettable with more glue and moisture.

I'm interested i knowing if Titebond can do that kind of bonding and reincorporating to old dried Titebond glue films after several years.

[Todd Stock]

Titebond is a curing glue, so the cross-linking that occurs as the original film dries does not reoccur when fresh glue is applied to fully cured glue...you end up with two distinct layers of glue with reduced tensile and shear values. Abrading the old glue helps quite a bit, as it provides some improved mechanical bonding and higher surface energy, but the cohesive strength (the resistant to failure in the glue line) is reduced versus a fresh glue joint in uncontaminated wood. Hide and fish are drying glues...allowed to dry and then rehydrated, they go back to being liquid hide and liquid fish, and - absent contaminates - dry to the same strength as the original glue line.

Worst case cracks are old Titebond-glued center joints on top plates that fail in the adhesive line...Titebond, fish, and hide all hold for a bit, then it's all about the reinforcement added behind the joint. CA comes closest to a permanent glue for the job, but comes with a whole host of other issues to deal with.