Hide glue

[shipwright]

Thank you. Yes, it is Honduras Mahogany.

The mix ratio, regardless of what you hear on YouTube is pretty irrelevant with hide glue. It must be hydrated before it is heated but as long as you have enough water to fully hydrate it you don’t need to worry about “ratio”. I add water to about a half inch above the glue (I use ~ 1/2 - 3/4 cup of glue) in a yoghurt tub.
What does matter is consistency once heated. If it is too thick, add water. If it is too thin, cook it a while. If you have the pot on all day every day like I do you will have to add water every once in a while to maintain optimum consistency. The mistake most new users make is to have it too thick. This reduces the working time and makes tight joints harder, especially in veneering.

I admire your experimentation. You will likely get a decent glue but I’m not sure how you would be able to really know it’s qualities. I would do a lot of testing before I used it on anything important that you want to last or that you are selling.

[Hobbyman2]

Thanks for the tip , I would have guessed it would need to be thick ,thanks for the tip .

I plan on gluing a lot of scrap pieces to test it out .

[shipwright]

The videos posted above are included with a lot of other tips in a blog I did on LJ.
Here's a link http://lumberjocks.com/shipwright/blog/series/5437

In the first segment there is a video by Patrick Edwards who knows more about animal protein glues than anyone I know. In it he gives a visual of the right consistency. I tell my students that you should be able to get a stream from a brush lifted up out of the pot that gets about two feet long before it breaks into droplets. That may be in the video too. However in the real world, it can make a quite a mess. Better to just get a feel for “just right” .
It is thinner, likely a lot thinner than you think.

[Hobbyman2]

I will sure give it a try thanks . I can see my great granddad flip flopping in his grave that one of his offspring actually did some thing the way he did . or else he is wondering why would any one do this when they have yellow glue lol

This batch of dog chews is still producing what appears to be decent gluten , it sure shrinks when it drys though.

[Hobbyman2]

I thought I would give this stuff a try this morning on a couple small pieces , I am totally surprised at the bonding ability this stuff has .
It seems to be easy to clean up , my pieces are larger then commercial pearls so cooking time may be longer then over the counter glue , the small crock pot on low hits the 140 deg fht pot temps right on the spot, that was a stroke of luck .

I have to thank shipwright for the tips on consistency and brush type , so far this might be a keeper ,other then the time involved it wasnt that hard to make ,,, looks like the shelf life might make it worth the extra effort .

Next time I may try the darker raw hide just to see if there is a difference , this batch was made from the large white square raw hide dog treats .

I did experiment with the thickness when I took it out of the crock pot to jell , it appears it didn't really make much of difference in the amount of dried product, the extra water just took longer to evaporate, the color of the glue stayed the same .