Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Everyone,
I'm Tony Hailey in Bartow Florida. I met Dickey on another site and he told me to join here because this is the real deal! He seems like a great guy and he builds beatiful guitars. I've been playing guitar and banjo and singing over 31 years and I've been building and repairing guitars (sometimes other string instruments) for over 20 years.
I enjoy acoustic fingerstyle the most even though I do play a homemade swamp ash tele with my own version of a PW B bender. I also love my old teisco that I made a bridge and tailpiece for slide in open E and I have a 62 long scale teisco lap steel and 2 other laps tuned in different keys. Enough resume for now.

I have a customer's 50's or 60's carved top Kay that some other person glued the neck on with Gorilla Glue. I have never taken a guitar apart with this type of glue on it.

Does anyone know how to soften the glue? The fingerboard isn't glued it looks like they strung it up before it was dry and it pulled up but the neck joint is there to stay.

Nice meeting you all. I really enjoy the info on this site.

Tony aka TBone62

Hi Tony, Welcome! I wish I had some advice on the glue but I'm not aware of a trick to get that stuff to let go. Heat might do it but I'm not sure. This is why we don't use Groilla glue as you already know.
Sorry to be of little help.
But I wanted to say HI and WELCOME. Don't be a stranger.
Paul

Welcome, Tony. Good to have your here.

Cool animation! Thanks for the welcome.

Thanks for your welcome message Carlton. Looking forward to the wealth of information here.

Tony, why not get some gorilla, and do some glueups, then try getting them apart with an iron, steam, etc etc? If all else fails, saw the neck off, make a new pocket and a new neck and put it back together.   

Welcome to the club, I agree with the experiments, try heat, steam, and if all else fails just leave a banana next to the guitar turn off the lights and see if the gorilla just lets go
Let us know if any of these work as I do a lot of neck resets and have yet to encounter the Gorilla glue.

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http://www.NewYorkGuitarRepair.com

Thanks Dickey,
I have some Gorilla glued wood as we speak setting up for tomorrow's experiments. The guy that did it is a great friend of mine. He actualy was the house Banjo/Fiddle player at the Grand Ole Opry for 5 years. When he was only 6 years old George Jones was actually his legal guardian for a tour while he played drums. He owns a music store and I do a lot of his repair work. I was there last night and I rummaged thru his shop and took all of his Gorilla and super glue (unless he hid some of it).

OK sorry for the picture changes. This was me about 7 yrs ago and now I'm 60 lbs lighter. I was playing a Bill Lawrence tele in the hot Florida sun. Any Ideas on Gorilla Glue?

Good to see you around Tony. As I said in the email, not much of that in use in lutherie circles. I bet we end up learning somethng from you. Cause our turn may be next. They did what to that vintage Martin?

Bruce,
Did I say Martin? Actually it's a very nice (or scrap) Harmony with the carved top and F holes and the back is also carved. I guess I can get my propane torch out and try it? I told them that the words Gorilla and guitar do not go together. I did confiscate the glue. I did a Martin D35 once that was epoxied and it was no easy task. I can't wait maybe I can actually share something with an ekite group of experts such as the folks on this forum. You do know if I destroy it it's still going to turn out fine(lol).

   Gorilla glue , well TNT or a chainsaw. this stuff should be outlawed on a guitar.
John Hall

Hi Tony and welcome here,

If you ever need a Bear to get that Gorilla out, let me know, i'm here!

Serge, the Bear

Welcome Tony,
Gorilla Glue is a polyurethane glue. Steam will have no effect on it, as it is
a waterproof glue, or at least very water resistant. Heat is probably the
only thing that might soften it, but getting enough heat to it in your
circumstances may be difficult.

There is one circumstance where a polyurethane glue is appropriate in
guitar construction. When using resinous or oily woods, it is excellent for
joining the center seam of the back. Polyurethane glue doesn't care if the
wood is oily, resinous, or otherwise difficult to glue. It glues just about
anything to anything. And with the very narrow glue joint of the back, you
want the joint to be as integral as possible. This is one of the few joints
you will likely never want to be able to take apart.
Just my thoughts.
Craig

This is why I hide glue my neck dovetails and bridges, reversibility.

Tbone, gorilla glue may be impervious to water but in steam form, it carries a lot of heat. That is if heat will do the trick. Franks steam needle and a wiping rag seem your only hope. www.frets.com

Nah, I was going on about a vintage Martin having been sabotaged with Gorilla Glue and one of us facing fixing it. We may just learn something from you TBONE.   

Another use for polyurethane glues are for things like headplates and even fingerboards. Very little added moisture, little/no creep, good open time. IMO, it's a nice adhesive if used selectively.

Heat does work to release it cleanly. Removing a fingerboard is not a problem. A dovetail joint is less certain. The big question is can you can get the joint hot enough without causing other problems?

Like I said, cut off the neck.

Cut a new mortise.

Make a new neck.

'fraid this one isn't worth the effort.

Once I contacted a luthier who only worked on hundreds of years old violin family. He was replacing the neck, doing a scroll graft onto a new neck. His comments to my question did he get nervous working on those priceless artifacts and he said, "No."

He said that the priceless instruments never have seen ill treatment or repair. So it makes sense that the more valuable an instrument is, the less likely it is to be ill-repaired. He was working on a vintage cello a couple hundred years old. I'm sure TBone's friend meant no harm. It just didn't work out. Hopefully there will be a happy ending to this story.

I am about to bend a set of wood that has sapwood down the side (just a little) and I don't want to rout it off during the binding process, so I am glueing a strip of wood to the side prior to bending that will be sanded in the shaping of the sides then routed off for bindings after the linings are install. Since I want to glue this before bending, I'm gonna try.......you guessed it "Gorila Glue". mayhaps it does have a place in luthery, of course it will not be part of the final product.

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.