Glue for skin drum/banjo head?

[Karl Wicklund]

Jim McConkey posted this (https://youtu.be/CFDLr3i1WLM) youtube video over in the percussion forum. The fellow installs a goat skin head on a bodhran. To avoid tearout along the tacks, he glues down the skin and clamps it with a strip of inner tube.

My only experience with mounting skin heads is on a couple small banjos. I did not use glue. It would seem to me that the skin would start to dry and pull free before the glue cures. Is this just my inexperience talking, or does the guy in the video use some special adhesive? He says it is a water based glue with "fixative" in it.

[Jim McConkey]

Gluing is common practice when building drums, but not on banjos. Several makers have commented the drying is actually the other way around. The glue cures far more quickly than the hide and it seems to be a race to get the head pulled evenly before the glue sets. It can take a day or two for the head to dry out completely vs. minutes to hours for the glue.

The maker in that video, who is from Ireland, mentions using Blue Bostik glue on his web site. I am not sure that glue is sold in the US, so I don't know what the equivalent would be here. But I have also found mention in several other places of people using hide glue

[Karl Wicklund]

Thanks! Food for thought, and a little trial and error.

[Steven Smith]

I repaired a shamisen once which uses a skin head glued to the wooden body. I used a goat skin and Titebond - worked fine.

[Jon Whitney]

I've built a couple of tack head banjos. I used hide glue to glue on the hide head, but found the glue gelled (not the same as cured!) long before I was able to get all the tacks in to hold the head in position while the glue cures. This is due to the evaporation from the wet head cooling the glue. To rectify, I re-heated the glue, head, and rim contact area with steam from a tea kettle, after I finished driving in the tacks. This smoothed out the glue nicely. I've had no problems with the head loosening.