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That's a complete and total myth. They've all been repaired and reglued multiple times. Joints that are 400 years old and haven't been reglued are ready to crumble to dust, if not dust already.

Show me a hundred year old guitar in playable condition that has not been repaired, I dare you.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Sorry but that's just total nonsense and shows a distinct ignorance of old instruments. Of course old instruments have been repaired and reglued but the idea that every single joint has had remedial gluing work done is laughable. I personally own a few Violins made during the 19 th century and there isn't the slightest sign that the centre seams have been redone. Plenty of signs that the plates have been removed but that is hardly unusual. I've worked on hundreds of old instruments where the joints are perfectly intact and the instruments are perfectly playable. If Hide glue disintegrated after a certain time period we would know about it.
That would mean that every single joint in every single instrument that was 100+ years old would need regluing.
Can you imagine doing that to some of the fancy decorated Romantic Guitars of 1820? or (much worse) some of the highly decorated 400 year old Voboam instruments, covered in shell glued to a wooden substrate? What of all the countless thousands of fancy decorated wooden objects? Every item would lay in a few hundred bits, cost prohibitive to repair. The fact is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of old wooden objects that have been glued with Hide/Bone glue and are still perfectly serviceable. Fit for use. The museums of the world are full of them. The rooms of the world are full of them.
Hide glue does not disintegrate after a certain time period. If it did we would be aware of it by now. In fact we would have been aware of it 200 years ago. We aren't. It may disintegrate if it has been subjected to the wrong preparation or conditions though, which is an entirely different point.
Maybe you should actually talk to the people who restore old instruments or the museum conservation people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLpEHg1wShk

Listen to what he says right at the end of the video. The substance that Torres was adding was almost certainly Alum, which renders Hide glue waterproof.
If you still doubt email Richard Brune and ask him about hide glue disintegrating. He usually answers. I can offer many, many more names that restore historical instruments. Either that or post a thread over at maestronet. There are some pretty big names over there who restore Strads, Guarneris et al. I'm quite sure they will respond.

Glue is almost a religious political discussion. In most cases joint integrity is indeed a factor. I have gone away from Tite bond for the creep issues on the bridge and use mostly fish glue as a preference. You must find what works best for you. The more people tell me there way is the only way , the less I want to listen to them.
Frank Fork has a long service record and is most helpful in his posts and with Frets.com. I agree with Frank of the creep and have seen it on many martins. Yes I have seen old hide glue failures but be honest , we don't know if they were ever stressed by high heat , moisture or such . Often an old guitar may have been stored in an attic and who knows what it was exposed to . Possible some microbe may indeed consume the protien of the glue .
We have to agree to disagree . Anyone that does this for a living will over time see some odd things. Making assumptions of why is at best a guess. Any glue that is strong enough to hold the wood is a workable glue. Not all glues are fit for guitar use. Technique is also as important as the glue used.
A good glue joint will at best have only a few thousands of an inch of glue joint . A bad joint is a bad joint and no glue can make it a good one.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I don't know about anyone else, but I've yet to have a problem that I can't trace back to me. In other words, it's not the glue.

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George :-)

Here's one that is the glue!

That sounds to me very much like one of the urea-formaldehyde formulations that were around about then. The life of the glue joint can be as short as ~10 years and then it progressively turns into the gritty powder described. I've seen it happen on both furniture and boats where I know what the glue was - Cascamite in those cases, though I'm sure it wasn't the only brand that suffered that way.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

And to add further fuel. I can still remember my father using Hide/Bone glue, sometime in the mid to late 60's. It came in a small metal container. He would boil the kettle, immediately pour the water into the container and quickly stir the contents. After a few minutes the glue was ready to use. The open container would then be left on a shelf, ready for use days or weeks later.
It works. I've tried it. Green mouldy glue works too. I've tried that. I just can't tell you if it works 1 year, 30 years or 300 years down the line.

I'm not against hide glue, BTW just realistic.

Sure, SOME joints in SOME instruments will hold, stranger things have happened, but most fail, and the guy in the video spent 4 years restoring the instrument. He was probably repairing things like cracks, creeping parts, and joint failures. He mentioned that it had been worked on in the 20's as well. Obviously he spent quite some time disassembling it and reassembling it.

I personally know many people with antique furniture. Whenever they talk about it, they always talk about how much the restoration cost.

In the course of restoration, instruments are quite frequently disassembled and reassembled. If the joints are redone every 50 years or so, of COURSE they'll last hundreds of years, like maintaining a building!

Also, I don't think you can always tell by looking if a joint has been redone if it's a good job.

The fact is, even instruments made with hide glue need maintenance and restoration, quite frequently it seems, like instruments made with ANY glue. I too have discussed the subject with many people who restore old instruments, in private they'll be more candid than in a public forum where they have to maintain the "mystique" and prestige of not only old instruments, but the processes and materials used. Where in public they'll praise everything in awe, but in private they'll admit the instruments are compltely rebuilt every few years so that most of the glue, and even more of the wood parts themselves than they care to admit, are not native to the instrument anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if that Torres itself had some non-naive parts somewhere.

The people who buy these things don't want to hear about that, they want to hear about how much better the object they're paying, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for is and why.

I'm just being realistic.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Wow! I don't think I want to know any of those people! They are the same people who'll sell you an old Torres with naive parts!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Ah yes, the old "spelling error humour".

I meant "Native" parts.....

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Old growth, shmold growth!

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/History ... z1590.html

Here's an interesting guitar. Again, it has been through a LOT of restoration, including a new top. The work is flawless, and I'm sure that if we looked at it, we wouldn't be able to tell if it had been reglued or not.

Maybe Frank can chime in on exactly what has been done to the instrument over the 400 years of it's existence.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

You can't tell on that because it's a replacement top. On old violins you can usually tell if a centre seam has been re-glued because it affects the varnish. The only real way of hiding that is to over polish the whole lot or an expert retouch. Even then it's sometimes possible to tell. On instruments of lesser value eg. the plethora of Mittenwald/Schonbach Violins that are near 200 years old, it's fairly obvious whether centre seams or plates have been worked on. The instruments aren't really going to see quality retouch work, most simply aren't valuable enough. Having worked in repair these are the types of instruments that I have seen dozens of (probably more like hundreds). Certainly some came in with open seams, some with evidence that they had been reglued. Many, perhaps by far the majority, did not show any signs of being reglued. There is also another little tell tale sign. Repairs to centre seams usually see cleats - kind of a standard feature when re-gluing a seam, no different to cracks.
Of course even if an instrument shows signs of being reglued, it still doesn't tell us if that was due to the glue degrading. Many such failures are simply down to abuse and/or extra stress place on joints because of very low or high humidity. 200 years of being kept in various environments is going to take it's toll and it's highly unlikely that they saw the humidity control that many instruments see today - either in the making or thereafter. It's no different with furniture. They weren't waiting for the humidity to change so that they could glue the carcass together. Production had to go on regardless of whether they were knee deep in snow or experiencing a heatwave in mid summer.

Sure. But I reject the notion that a guitar will last hundreds of years due to the use of hide glue alone because it's so wonderful, as is implied by the statement that we know hide glue is phenomenal due to the thousands of extant ancient instruments that attest to hide glue's magical properties. Whenever hide glue is brought up, proponents point to ancient instruments as proof of hide glue's value. The reason the instruments have survived this long is due to meticulous restoration, not the magical properties of hide glue. I think the same would be true of guitars made with AR or PVA glue. They'll last as long as they're stored properly and meticulously restored as needed. It's not the glue, it's the effort put in to maintain the instruments that is responsible for their longevity, and the skill of the restorers.

Again, I have nothing against hide glue or it's use. It's a good glue. I'm just realistic about it's value and properties.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

No one is saying it has 'magical' properties, at least not me. I'm saying that it is a glue that has proven the test of time in joints that are hundreds of years old. Examples of degradation or joint failure does not provide evidence that all Hide is inherently prone to disintegration. There are far too many examples that show no such signs and we simply cannot say how or why the failed glue examples occurred. I suspect these failures are due to a number of reasons that have already been outlined - inferior glue, poor technique/practice, adverse conditions. Those are the more likely factors and it would also explain why we see numerous examples of joints that have held over hundreds of years.

But it's inaccurate to attribute the longevity of the instruments to the glue used.
They last a long time because of the care put into maintaining them.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

What maintenance? several months ago I examined a Lacote Guitar, near 200 years old. It looked as though it had never seen strings for 150 of years. Two of the tuning pegs looked more like tent fixing pegs. Hewn from a piece of wood with a pen knife. It had 'issues' but they weren't one of Hide glue failure. It had several open cracks but the joints were all fine. For some odd reason you seem to be under the belief that every single Hide glue joint has been re-glued at some point. That is obviously not true. Not even remotely so. I doubt that there is anything more that I can add to persuade you otherwise.

I'm not disagreeing with that, nor attacking hide glue. Sure, if you seal up an instrument and leave the strings off for 150 years or so, it'll hold together. I bet the same thing is true of an instrument glued with titebond.
My point is that the longevity of instruments using hide glue is not due to the glue but the due dligence of maintaining the instruments throughout their life.
Is that guitar the exception or the norm, because from what I've seen and heard, most of the instruments that are still in service have been heavily restored and maintained, for whatever reason.
All I'm saying is that pointing to old instruments as a way of saying that hide glue is better than titebond simply because the old instruments are still here is a fallacious argument unless it can be shown that the same instrument made with titebond wouldn't be around anymore under the same conditions, consistently.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

New buildings haven't lasted like the old ones!

That's true, old buildings last hundreds of years when they're maintained properly...

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I guess we'll know in a couple hundred years if todays buildings lasted. Too bad Carter didn't find a guitar in Tut's tomb. Might have put an end to a lot of acrimony.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

What we really need is to find some instruments glued up with titebond 200 years ago to have some comparison??!!!

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MK5acoustics.com

Not to stir the glue pot but PVA and aliphatic resin glues were invented in the 1950s IIRC... when were they first used in instruments and have joints like center seams, bindings, etc. stood the test of time since then?

fish glue and Hot Hide glue were used in Egypt . A few thousand years versus a few decades.

Still as I said many time before, Technique and joint integrity are the most important parts for success.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Amen!

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Old growth, shmold growth!