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THE TRADITIONAL WORLD OF VIOLIN GLUE

7/26/2015

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How string instruments are glued together isn’t normally something that the
player needs to know about. Perhaps you have been playing for decades without
knowing. But there a few things to be aware of just in case.


There are a large variety of glues available in the modern world, but for string
instruments, the one that has been used for hundreds of years and continues to
be used, is hide glue. As the name suggests, this glue is made from boiling up
animal hides to produce a gelatinous glue. It is applied by making a warm
solution in water, brushing it on, then letting it cool. So not surprisingly, if
your instrument gets too hot, hide glue starts to lose its strength and may fail
structurally. So that’s a really good reason not to leave your instrument in a
hot car, or other hot location, as well as the damage that heat can cause to the
wood or varnish.

One of the main reasons the hide glue is still used today is that it is a
reversible glue. Using enough force will cause a hide glue bond to break,
usually without damage to the wood. Sometimes warm water is used to weaken the
glue. The top of a string instruments is attached using a weak hide glue, and if
a violin maker needs to remove the top of an instrument they can do this by
inserting a knife into the join to the ribs and breaking the glue join.

Modern glues may stick as well or better than hide glue, but they are usually
not reversible. If you have a crack or an open seam in your instrument never
repair it with anything but hide glue, which probably means taking it to a
violin maker. A repair with epoxy glue (eg araldite) is the least reversible,
while white wood glue (PVA) is somewhat reversible, but seeps into the wood and
is difficult to get out when future repairs are needed. Once a surface has been
glued with PVA glue, then residual glue in the wood will prevent a future repair
with hide glue from forming a strong bond with the wood.

Hide glue is quite hard when set, allowing good transmission of sound vibrations
through glue joins. By contrast the softer PVA tends to damp sound vibrations
which may adversely affect the sound of the instrument. The rubbery nature of
PVA glue can also cause PVA joints to slowly creep, or move over time.

So the two simple things to remember about glues:
1.  Never let your instrument get too hot otherwise the hide glue may fail
2.  Never do home repairs to your instrument with anything other than hide glue.
The safest bet is to visit a violin maker.

Technical postscript:
For those who want the full story – yes there may be a non-reversible glue that
was used by the old Italian masters. Repairers of these old Italian instruments
sometimes encounter glue joints which stubbornly resist removal by force or with
any type of solvent. Violin maker Roger Hargrave suggests that the glue used
maybe a casein based glue, made from milk proteins from cheese.

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MICHAEL

A VACMS cellist with an interest in string instrument acoustics.


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