Hide glue for bent laminations?

[James Spillman]

I'm building a chair with slightly bent arms. Arms will be 36" long by 6" wide. They will be a little over an inch thick. The cherry will be cut into 1/8" strips. I'm thinking of using hide glue to laminate the strips. Has anyone used hide glue for this? What were the results? Thanks.

[Mike Henderson]

If you're talking hot hide glue, I don't know how you could possible get everything coated before the glue cooled.

I've done a fair amount of bent lamination and used Titebond. People will tell you that PVA will creep but I've never had any problems - and that's with years on the laminations.

Sam Maloof used Titebond on his rocking chair rails (or skates) and I doubt if he would have done that if there were problems with creep.

Mike

[John Keeton]

I second the Titebond recommendation. The few laminations I have done held up very well. I suppose liquid hide glue might work, though hide glue can be brittle, too, so I think I would avoid that in a lamination.

[roger wiegand]

Most every old bent lamination you see was done with hot hide glue, but they had heated cauls in those factories, as well as steam heated presses and glue application systems that allowed them to work very quickly-- a rotating drum immersed in a pail of glue where you just run the board over the roller as fast as you can push it. More of a mess than most of us could stand in our shops!

I'd use titebond. Much as I've heard complaints about creep, I've never seen it happen. but I've only done a modest number of bent lamination projects.

[chris carter]

I've never done bent lamination, but....

You can drastically increase the working time of hot hide glue by adding salt. I've done this a few times and it totally works. After you have your hot hide glue ready, weigh it. You can add up to 15% of that weight in table salt. So if you have 50g of hot hide glue in your pot, you can add up to 7.5g of salt to it. How much salt you need depends on how long of a working time you desire so you might want to do a few very small test samples to see how much salt you want to add.

[Mel Fulks]

I'd use titebond. Much as I've heard complaints about creep, I've never seen it happen. but I've only done a modest number of bent lamination projects.[/QUOTE]

Cant pass on chance to agree. WHITE creeps a lot. Yellow was proclaimed superior right off because it doesn't creep.
That was acknowledged in "all the papers" and wood working mags. When we were using white a surfaced glue up would
often shift a little, requiring the piece to be carried back to shop from the finish room. Then toted back.

[William Fretwell]

Used Titrebond III for African Mahogany lamination, four layers on a form, no creep but wrapping the whole thing in carbon fibre and epoxy may explain the lack of creep. It was a large construction, hide glue would be a nightmare.