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Following Todd's advice, I'd like to try fish glue for my next binding job. I've used fish glue many years ago and my recollection is that, although I liked it, I found it hard to be neat with the stuff. So I am interested in how people apply the glue in demanding situations of doing purflings and bindings. For example if your purfling is comprised of three components, say, striping, zipflex, striping how do you neatly apply the glue to get in between all the purfling components and then outside that for the binding? Do you brush it in? How much glue do you apply at a time - a few inches, a whole side?

Thanks,
Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

Almost invariably I use syringes to corral glues into manageable applicators. Pat, if you have a co-op or TSC store in the area, they have all kinds of syringes with different sized replaceable needles for agricultural use & dirt cheap. (BuzyBee & LV also have 1pc syringes if you want to pay more )

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Dave
Milton, ON

+1 on the small 1oz bottles. I keep one with fish glue in it.

Also if I'm doing messy glue-ups like with epoxy so not necessarily binding, I wear some cheap nitrile gloves that I can just strip off and throw away.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I use whatever bottle of fish glue happens to be handy (usually a larger bottle). I'll glue 1 piece of binding in 2-3 sections. I try to apply enough glue so that I get a little bit of squeeze out. Having some water handy is a great suggestion as your fingers tend to get pretty sticky. I've found fish glue so much easier to scrape and sand that it makes up for a binding job that might be a little more messy. With a little practice you can do just as clean a job with fish glue as with any other glue.

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

When I use fish glue I have a damp towel hanging to keep cleaning my hands if I get glue on them. We spread a lot of glue smudges with our hands as we touch the body. Besides I hate sticky fingers. Fish glue wipes off real nice with hot water before it is fully cured. As Josh says it scrapes of real easy.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Syringes for me too. 18G needle. Glue up about 6" at a time. Works slick.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

BTW- There may not be a lot of varieties to choose from but, the drug store will give you syringes for free. I guess it is just in case you are a drug user... in any case, my local drug store gives them to me... they may or may not believe my story.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Same as most everyone above said - small applicator bottle, wet rags handy, and I run all the purfling strips through a pool of glue between two fingers. I like to make a real mess and get everything really saturated.

I use blue tape and mask the sides (and top or back) almost right up to the binding channels, to avoid some of the overall mess and drips, but that can be avoided with wet rags too - it just seems to take me more hands than I have to keep up with it using rags.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

double post (seems to be a Chrome feature - Firefox always seems to ignore the first try if a second one is piled on behind.)

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Thanks for the responses.

Here's a little method I worked out yesterday to apply small amounts of the fish glue. I was trying to find out if 1 ml transfer pipettes could suck up fish glue (normally I use these pipettes for CA). I found they could. Then I tried stretching out the end of one the pipettes to make it a really small diameter (again, like I do when using it for CA) but found it then could not suck up the relatively high viscosity glue. So then I took a new pipette, sucked up a bunch of glue, cleaned off the end and then stretched it out to a tiny diameter. After that, I was able to squeeze the glue out of the pipette in very small amounts. Hope people can find that of some use.

Cheers,
Pat

_________________
There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

thanks for the tip, might be useful.
:D so true!

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I think my technique looks more like caulking gun application

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu