Salt in hide glue?

[Doug Polk]

Just rewad the post about using urea in hide glue to extend working time. I have also read somewhere that plain table salt can be used as well. Any truth to this?

[Chris Reed]

I've also read this. I believe the trade off is working time for joint strength.

[Woodrow Brackett]

I have used salt to extend open times. I use hot hide glue, pretty much exclusively, but I'm not sure what gram strength I have. I've got a couple five gallon buckets that were handed down several generations. It's my understanding that higher gram strength gels quicker....at a warmer temp.......lower gram strengths gel at a lower temp. The glue I use gels at ~95 degrees F. Adding 10% salt will lower the gel point ~10 degrees. It seems OK in tests I done. I used HHG +10% salt to close the box for a while, but finally decided I didn't need the extra time. Mario has a video closing the box with HHG. He's quick and efficient, but isn't.....running around like a mad man. It helped me realize I didn't need the extra time.

By "adding 10% salt" I'm saying for an example, 20 grams for glue granules, 2 grams salt.....then the approiate amount of water. Another observation it took me a while to figure out. Glue that's really thin/watery gels quicker. Thicker glue tends to hold heat better, at least for me. Always test on scrap, and YMMV

[Nick Middleton]

Here's an article Popular Woodworking posted a while back regarding this:

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/artic ... iquid-form


At the bottom of the article they talked about using salt to convert HHG to LHG