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Thread: Cheap Hide Glue set up

  1. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by David Ragan View Post
    Hi Mike-I always just imagined that the periods of early, and late wood, each an annual cycle, were trying to straighten out, ie, lay out flat-as opposed to being bound up circling a tree.

    So-HHG makes all this veneer configurations easier? I hope so, just ordered 10lb from Highland Woodworking. (That way, I don't have to be concerned about batch to batch variation in regards to exact properties for water, etc)
    Doing veneer with hot hide glue (hammer veneering) is very different from vacuum pressing. One problem that I was attempting to alert you to is that certain veneers are not well behaved when worked with hot hide glue because of the water content in the glue.

    Pressing veneer with hot hide glue is a special skill. You may like it, or you may not.

    The commercial glue pots regulate the temperature pretty well. I'd have to go look at the documentation but 140 degrees sticks in my head. I tried putting water in the pot, then the hot hide glue in a glass jar sitting in the water. Other people have reported good results with that, but I had problems. The glue in the jar just wouldn't get hot enough. Maybe if I left it sit longer it might have worked. People do that when they only want to mix up a small amount of hot hide glue. I just put it in the pot and worked it from there. It's not hard to clean the pot - the glue is water soluble and cleans up pretty easy.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  2. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by David Ragan View Post

    Hi Robert-I had to revisit the entire topic on account of wanting to use a pyrex beaker instead of a Ball jar. Unfortunately, the pyrex beaker was too tight a fit, and did not allow but a minute amount of water in the wax melter-which would evaporate way too quick. Heating the beaker in dry wax melter did not do it at all. Not good contact between heat element/beaker bottom.

    So, back to square one-the hot pot? the thing cycled on @ minimal temperature of 150*F on "warm".

    So, I brought the variable rheostat back out. Same thing, as soon as the temp of water in the hot pot dropped to 150*, it came back on no matter how little current I gave it. My target for HHG is 140*. I was fairly disappointed.

    Then, I got out the hot plate warmer, and sat the beaker assembly on it......turns out w the temp dial at ~4:30, the beaker (w everything in it) will hover around 140*. All this was worked out over about 8 hours this last weekend. The surface temp of the hot plate had to be 275-300* for the water/HHG to achieve 140*

    Of course, now, I'm thinking maybe the HHG $150 pot aint such a bad deal. But, you can't vary the temp there, right?

    What temp do those things run at?
    David,

    My Hot Pot Express is about 6 years old, I know at the minimal setting (leftmost) the water temperature is about 120F, too cold for 192 gram HHG, but ok for something like Olde Brown Glue. Maybe Rival made a change in the thermostat for the device? Obviously, the best device would be a true HHG pot and in all honesty as much as I use HHG I should really spring for one.

  3. #18
    I work with hot hide glue a lot. A few suggestions:

    1. An inexpensive way to hit the right temperature is to buy just a regular spiral heating element hot plate with a continuously variable temperature control and use that as the heat source. I used to just heat a shallow pan of water on the hot plate, then put a smaller container of glue into the pan of water to work as a double boiler. Stick a thermometer down in the glue, and fiddle with the control to get the temperature of the glue to stay around 140-145 F.

    2. In general, double boiling is a good way to keep the temperature of the glue where you want it, rather than direct heat sources.

    3. Nowadays, since I work with hot hide glue so much, I use a fancy brass double boiler on a laboratory student hot plate. The lab hot plate holds the temperature exactly where I want it, and the double boiler holds the perfect amount of glue. It is made by Music Caravan.

    4. If you are having trouble with the glue getting everywhere, maybe thicken it up a bit. If you are using 2 parts of water to 1 part dry glue, that is too thin for many tasks. I actually work with a 1 to 1.8 ratio, and it is less runny. You can always thin it out with a little more water.

    5. If you need to extend the gel time of the glue, you can add either urea or table salt to the glue. Small amounts extend the gel time a little; larger amounts turn it into the equivalent of Old Brown Glue, and it will stay liquid at room temperature. When I have an assembly that will take a few minutes, adding some urea gives me the additional time, and small amounts won't significantly hurt the holding power of the glue.

    6. Clean squeeze out as soon as you can, using a hot damp rag. If there are large amounts, you can easily scrape up the boogers, then wipe the workpiece with the damp rag to get the rest. This stuff dries out pretty fast, so I try to clean up the squeeze out in less than a half hour after assembly.

    7. What you describe about making the glue sounds a bit off. Making it is simple: soak the dry glue in the amount of water you want, wait until the water is all soaked into the dry glue ( should be a gelatinous blob), then heat to the right temperature. Boom, it's glue. It takes me a half hour to go from dry glue to hot hide glue: 15 minutes to soak, 15 minutes to heat it up.

    Good luck with it moving forward.
    Last edited by Don Parker; 01-10-2017 at 6:35 AM. Reason: Misspelled word

  4. #19
    Join Date
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    I started this thread in January, and would like to post what I wound up with.

    Sorry about the lengthy post:

    During this process, all possible suggestions were tried,

    Please note in the photo below, the use of a variable rheostat-(IIRC, temp was too hot) ---didn't work, though

    Here you have the mini-crock pot, and over to the right, a Proctor-Silex hot pot---both had great potential because of being hard to tip over/come-a-loose; however, ultimately, inability to control the temperature meant death for these two-somewhat surprising and disappointing.

    007.JPG

    Next, the precariously tall and somewhat hazardous hot plate/double boiler method. I threw that out-the double boiler and hot plate would have required me to construct a special box to house it into one cohesive unit (too much chance of boiler/hot plate becoming uncoupled/tip over...I'm a klutz.)

    002.JPG

    The next two pictures is what I settled on. A wax melter:

    The only issue here was the very small space surrounding the beaker in the melter. The water evaporated too quickly. I needed something that would not evaporate, but transmit heat efficiently to the beaker.

    A friend is a chemist, and he said the best thing to use in the space (which was ~2.3mm around) would be salt or sand. Since I wanted maximal transfer of heat into the beaker, not just from the bottom.

    The picture below is just after hot hobby glueing of 3/32" brass rods on all sides of beaker to center it in pot.

    I put a little salt in the beaker bottom, put centered beaker in wax melter, then salt around that.


    028.JPG

    Then, sealed the whole contraption in that hand held shrink wrap stuff (great stuff). That holds it all together, as can be seen in last photo.

    1) After some thinking about the ways I could screw this up, I changed out the salt for laboratory grade super fine sand-if water got into this area, salt of course, would dissolve.
    2) temperature (I can say after many months) variable w desirable 135-140* in middle of range of source
    3) once set up, no maintenance besides the water.
    4) The plastic bag/rubber band addition is to slow heat loss via evaporation-less adding water to the beaker.

    Final set up as it is today:
    017.JPG



    It is ugly---I just didn't want to spend >$100 for a glue pot.

    The syringes work great. No evaporation, so no adding water to glue needed over time. 5% urea added gives me more open time.

    You can see a temp scale below heat slider bar.

    Also, in regards to actual application-I like the syringe method (no needle), very little dribbling glue all over; using a smaller syringe allows precise application for stringing.


    Feedback?
    David
    Confidence: That feeling you get before fully understanding a situation (Anonymous)

  5. #20
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    Great solution, thanks for getting back to us.

    Where did you purchase your wax melter set up?

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  6. #21
    Two Hold-Heet pots with scrap cutting board (LDPE) inserts hold my two ounce squeeze bottle and 8 ounce jelly jar...the insert is the trick to keeping the glue at 140-145...tight fitting opening keeps the glue container suspended and water from evaporating. For large glue-ups, a Rival hot pot provides hot water for clean-up and another gram strength of glue if we have a couple folks in the shop and we need the stronger glue for high stress glue-ups. Don has the flick on mixing glue - not complicated...cover with water, let it suck up as much water (distilled for me) as it can, then heat. We make free use of heat guns to keep things warm and the glue above gel temp, but for smaller stuff, a Saltan plate warmer of the type seen at every 50's/early 60's dinner party is a good bet and available on eBay.

    Making up glue for the day is usually delegated to whichever student is in on the weekends (we keep the batch for a week), although I have been known to exchange the glue making chores for fresh lemon bars.

  7. #22
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    Graham, NC
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    I mix my hide glue up in an empty ketchup bottle (Thanks Don Williams) then heat it in an old style crock pot full of water set on high. The temperature is controlled using one of these:
    Inkbird-Itc-308-Digital-Temperature-Controller-Outlet-Thermostat-2-stage-_57.jpg
    Its a digitally programmable thermostat with relayed outputs for heating and cooling with a temperature probe for feedback. You drop the temperature probe in your water bath with the glue bottle and set the thermostat for your desired hold temperature.
    There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over.

  8. #23
    Join Date
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    It is a little embarrassing to put information out there as having been taken as The Best/Only Way to do something.

    There are no doubt many ways to accomplish this task; I suppose it all depends on what products we have access to, and our personal dis/likes.

    It is very cool to exchange all the different ways of doing things

    "YMMV"


    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    Great solution, thanks for getting back to us.

    Where did you purchase your wax melter set up?

    jtk
    Hey Jim-there is a Sally Beauty Supply up the road. Any wax melter should do-the holding area is standardized in the industry. They all "should" have variable temp

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason Dean View Post
    I mix my hide glue up in an empty ketchup bottle (Thanks Don Williams) then heat it in an old style crock pot full of water set on high. The temperature is controlled using one of these:
    Inkbird-Itc-308-Digital-Temperature-Controller-Outlet-Thermostat-2-stage-_57.jpg
    Its a digitally programmable thermostat with relayed outputs for heating and cooling with a temperature probe for feedback. You drop the temperature probe in your water bath with the glue bottle and set the thermostat for your desired hold temperature.
    Excellent-just put on my wish Amazon wish list; I had no idea.

    Have you observed how high/low from set temp it goes before it kicks in?
    David
    Confidence: That feeling you get before fully understanding a situation (Anonymous)

  9. #24
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    Jan 2014
    Location
    Graham, NC
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    David,

    The threshold for the temperature change is programmable as well. I set mine at 1 degree. This wasn't verified with another thermometer, but the device at least agrees with itself.
    There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over.

  10. #25
    Here is a video about Hot Hide Glue, made by Frank Strazza:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1CRfPIvAeA

    He talks about using Urea to extend open time.

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