What Kind Of Glue Holds Your Guitar Together?
A strange thought came to my mind the other day as I was replacing a truss rod in a super cheap Chinese made guitar. In the process of softening the glue used to put the fingerboard on the neck itself I wondered if every company used the correct glues. To get at a truss rod, in most cases one would remove the neck itself. Necks are either bolted or screwed on, or they are actually glued to the body of the guitar. This one was a screw on neck so I took off the strings and unsrewed it. First, there are only two types of glues used on guitars that are acceptable. Period. No epoxy, cements or super glue! The two acceptable glues are: Ground Hide Glue, which is a traditional luthiers glue and Franklin Co. “Titebond’ Glue. One of the most important qualities of a guitar makers glue is the abi alternate picking lity to separate the glued pieces of wood without damaging the guitar. Guitars break or get broken, realistically speaking, most folks will fix an expensive guitar rather than trash it. One quality of the glues for making or fixing guitars is that the parts can be separated with ease by someone qualified. Without giving away my top secrets, lets just say the components that are going to be separated need to be heated up in order to soften the glue. Adding that you should not experiment with this type of procedure if you are not qualified. Back on subject, the big thing in heating is not getting the parts to hot and damaging the wood or finish. In most cases the max heat needed to separate the glue would be 200 degrees. Simply put, the cheap neck did not separate until I hit 210 degrees.