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When bending purfling and gluing binding with hide glue, I sometimes use a heat lamp or heat gun to bend or get more working time.
Every once in a while, I overheat an inner tube strip and get dope slapped as things unravel.

I'm pitching my ratty inner tube collection. I found some big silicone bands that can handle all the heat. Just used them for the first time and they are the bomb.
Thought I'd share incase it helps someone else.
http://www.grifiti.com/big-ass-band

David--

What great timing! I just taped binding and purfling onto two bodies with hot hide glue as the adhesive. I was thinking to myself the whole time that I really needed to switch to rubber bands, because the inevitable dribble of glue down the side can make it hard for the tape to stick. What size bands are you using? Thanks for the heads up.

Colors make it easy to tell them apart too. Nice idea, please share the source.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I put a link in the first post. let me know if it's not working.

I bought bags of 9''L x 3/4"W and 12"L x 1"W. Two 9" girth hitched together makes a good third length.

I should have ordered one color per size to quickly pick them out.

Thanks - I missed the link

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Sure looks like it beats the heck out of tons of masking tape....

_________________
"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."

Can I ask why you're using hide glue for bindings?

I just had an idea I can't wait to try.

Next time I'm repairing a loose plastic binding at the waist with a heat gun, I might try stretching these before heating.
Let the bands stretch and clamp it in place as it gets warm enough.

Says their good to 700 degrees. That ought to do it.

The tone of instruments bound with CA or AR glue drives me crazy.

Sorry.

99.9% of what I do is repairs. It's kind of turned me into a hide glue zealot. No scraping out old glue leaving gaps, or trying to choose an adhesive that will stick to the old failed glue. Higher heat resistance too.
This is the auto-roasting season here in Colorado. At least a few times a summer, an instrument comes into the shop and every AR glue joint on it has been turned to taffy and shifted before cooling.............blah blah....(insert general hide glue rant here).

I use plenty of Epoxy, CA, and AR glues in repairs, but if I'm sticking wood together for the first time and for the long haul I prefer hide. It seems to stick wood together pretty well.

I'm a hack, and David explains it better, but I do it for all the reasons why people like hot hide glue in general: If it's a good joint, it lasts and holds really well, it doesn't creep, it doesn't screw up the finish, new glue sticks to old glue (that's a big deal to me), etc. The hassle is the working time, but you learn to live with that in order to get the good things.

I am not a repair or build professional (amateur hack is my official description), so I have the luxury of trying really, really hard to only use hot hide glue for everything that actually goes on the guitar. Jigs and fixtures get Titebond, but guitars get hot hide glue, period. Maybe that's hard headed and insane, but I yam what I yam.

A concern I have, and unfortunately it didn't hit me until I had received the band's I ordered, is the possibility of silicon from the bands contaminating the wood, and causing adhesion problems with the finish.
Does anyone know if this is or isn't a problem?

I thought about it, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
I figured there was a fair amount of scraping and sanding before finish. It's hard to imagine it would be a problem, But it's probably a good idea to pay close attention to the first few times around.

Are you saying we have to start worrying about bending blankets, bridge, bridge plate, and fretboard heaters releasing liquid silicone? Oh no!

I am fairly sure that the silicone in silicone rubber is well bound, although we make it a habit in the shop of cleaning the surface of anything likely to have been made with release agents or preservative coatings before use. Perhaps a knowledgeable engineer or materials scientist can enlighten us?

_________________
We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.

-Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel)

Considering there are silicone glue brushes and food utensils being sold, I don't se how there could be much floating around.

I just thought I would bump this thread, because I finally got around to trying out this binding method (silicone rubber bands instead of tape), and I really liked it. I would post pics, but they would mostly look like David Farmer's in his original post. My body platform has the dowel pegs sticking out of the bottom rather than the side, and my platform is slightly smaller than the guitar; otherwise, the process looks the same.

I was able to use hot hide glue with a little urea in it to extend the pre-gel time a bit. To make sure I got a good glue joint, I also went back after all the bands were on and gave the whole edge some heat with a heat gun, making sure to melt the squeeze out. The result: This is the tightest binding job I have ever done. There is some glue crud to clean up (there always is), but I lost no wood fibers to tape removal. I will keep doing this until something better comes along!

One downside is that you can really only do half of a top or back at a time. I'm OK with that.

It looks like the above link is dead. Does anyone know if these are still offered somewhere?


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James--

Just Google Grifiti Band Joes silicone bands. Several sources, including Amazon, will pop up.

Great. Thank you, Don.


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My pleasure. Here's a heads up to help you shop. I bought 3 sizes of bands:

18" long x 1" wide
12" long x 1" wide
9" long x 3/4" wide

The lengths are measured as the rubber band is lying flat on the bench, unstretched. They express half the unstretched circumference of the band. I hope that makes sense.

I found the 18" bands to be great for the end-to-end pressure. You can also use two 9" bands knotted together to do the same thing. The 12" bands are great for the waist and across each bout. I have plenty, but I wish I had bought a few more 18" bands.

Great tip. Thanks

Don, thanks for this info. Binding is the one of the only parts of the instrument I don't use HHG on (the other is laminated linings), and I'd like to change that one day. These bands certainly look useful in that regard. How much more pre-gel time do you get with the addition of urea? Would you be willing to share some details of your process for HHG gluing binding?

When I bind with AR glue I tend to spread glue from tail end to waist, tape binding in, then spread glue from waist to the neck end and glue the remainder of the binding on that side. I get away with this due to the open time of AR glue, and I could probably apply glue to the whole channel and do it all in one go if I was of a mind and weather was cool. Do you find you need to work in smaller segments with HHG?

Josh—

Here is some useful info on the addition of urea in general, and for this task in particular.

If you want to make hot hide glue that stays liquid at room temperature, you can add urea that amounts to 30% of the weight of the dry glue you used to make the batch. That might be the way to go if you want to keep your current process. Less might work, too (like 20%). I just read somewhere that Old Brown Glue uses urea that amounts to 30% of the weight of the dry glue, so that’s what I use to make my own liquid hide glue.

I have found that adding 10% gives me several minutes of pre-gel time, and that is enough for me to clamp just about anything. That is what I used here. I like 10% because I have not been able to tell any strength difference or other differences in the glue, other than having more pre-gel working time.

For this specific task, I keep the water to glue ratio on the low end. I like a 1.8 water to 1.0 dry glue ratio, because runny glue is hard to work with for this job.

I use a very small artist’s brush for this task, rather than the larger brushes I use for most glue-ups.

I glue 2-3 inches at a time. I start with the waist, then work out in both directions. I gently tug the binding away from the guitar, slip the wet brush into the channel, and spread the glue. As I apply the bands, I’m always leaving about an inch of glued binding without a band on it. I apply the bands the way you see people rope a guitar; around the waist, then each bout is treated like a circle for a few bands (wrapping to the opposite side of that bout), then go end to end with the largest bands.

When the edge is fully wrapped (half a top or back at a time), heat the edge with a heat gun on the low setting, just enough to melt the squeeze out. Be careful with the heat! You can go too far.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you need more info.

Slightly off topic - but for those that like to use HHG here is a clamping caul you may find useful. It is made from foam pipe insulation and 1/4 inch mdf. It only requires three clamps to do the job and compresses the plate around the edge and not in the middle. Ideally you would make one for each plantilla, but this "size 1" caul works O.K. for a classical (or LG) body

Thanks Don, appreciate it!


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Hey Don, I'm coming back to the well here.

If you were to order again, what would be a comfortable number of each size to have?