Official Luthiers Forum!

Anyone use this tool from Stewmac?

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/T ... Wedge.html

I've been using the same little tool I made many years ago, it's basically a syringe at the end of a tube and it works reasonably well but then I came across this tool and thought how clever. But does it really work?

I've got one. I used it once, didn't like it

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

What was it about it that you didn't like?

It's been a few years but as best I remember I had trouble with the plastic reservoir leaking and just generally getting it to work the way it was supposed to. I recall it just seemed awkward. Maybe it was just me. Now I use a curved tip irrigation syringe.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Ok good to know and yeah that's more or less the way I am doing it now too, with a syringe.

We have syringes on leads and they are called butterflies. We have boxes and boxes of them and bought in bulk ten years ago. A junky would be in heaven in our shop needle wise.

But I don't like using them and prefer an older method. But first what's wrong with this tool like is often the case with some of these specialized Luthery tools is it's over engineered in my opinion and experience. We have one too and tried to make it work and threw it in a drawer destined to never be used again.

What's wrong with the syringes in my experience is once you get done blindly stabbing the **** out of your back plate, braces, finger, etc the tip of the needle gets buried out of view under a brace. So we hit the plunger and the thick glue is barely forced though a thin tube/lead and then into an even thinner needle (we have many sizes of needles and they all suck...).

You never know how long to hold the plunger and you can't see anything to know that a puddle of glue is now forming behind the brace..... With this said the glue spread is inconsistent and often more gets on the guitar than under a brace.

If you have the syringe variety that David Collins came up with and shared here and many OLFers built for their own selves with the small clamp to pump the plunger as you know the pressure from the clamp is constant so the glue keep flowing until the clamp is released. It was a cool idea that Dave had and it works very well when you have better ability to slide the needle without it being stuck in a tight fit.

I personally am old school with this and don't use the syringes. Instead with a small bottle of glue and gravity I lay a bead next to the loose brace and then shove the glue under the brace with a feeler gauge. it works fine and since I can see the initial bead size I'm not using too much glue. Pump the brace a few times to spread the glue further, get a mirror to verify squeeze out on the back side.

Wipe up the excess, set my rare earth special clamps in place and.... next.

I'm doing pretty much what Hesh is describing. Instead of a glue bottle I use an irrigation syringe and only put the amount of glue in it that I need.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thanks Hesh. Yes I made the Dave Collins one and do find it difficult but then I guess anything is reaching blindly inside a guitar. I mount the guitar in the vise so that it hangs in mid air and gravity feed it in too. Always looking for a better way but yeah I think I will pass on the tool and stick to gravity.

Compressed air is our friend too and you can use your nozzle if it is sensitive enough to blow the glue under braces. I frequently use compressed air to blow glue into the nether regions of head stock breaks too. I'm just barely letting any air out and that's what I mean by sensitive so no deluge of air, just a little bit.

Just be careful with vacuum or compressed air in the box if you have a bigger arm that may plug up much of the sound hole. We have had OLFers post that using a vac inside the box with their arm blocking the sound hole collapsed the top and destroyed it. Inflating a box likely could do this too I've just never heard of it, yet.

You are very welcome.

Ha! Wow I never would have thought of that. Fortunate I got long scrawny monkey arms and can reach all the way to the tail block of a Dred.

I've had success with the wedge (I heat it on the side of my glue pot when using HHG), brushes, perforated pallet knives, and syringes - I use hot hide glue whenever possible, so keeping it up to temp is the main consideration for my application.

With the wedge I did need to thin and polish the tip further and use scotch tape to modify the channel and aperture to control the glue flow. It is not very functional right out of the box. I can take some photos of the taped up tip if that is useful for people.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVkTxGiFGrM/

If I use fish glue, a pallet knife is tough to beat.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BemKGZXBAPt/



Does anyone have a photo of the Dave Collins glue applicator?

Thanks for the review. Dan Erlewine has a video out there showing how to use it and he uses scotch tape as well.

So many tools are sold with an implied suggestion that the tool can replace experience, care, and judgement, they will allow an inexperienced person to achieve skilled results without the skill. Nope.

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Peter Havriluk

Bought one, used it twice. I prefer, drawing a bead, using a knife to push the glue in, wipe, and clamp...as mentioned above.

Slightly off topic but related. Try a search on Amazon for "USB Microscope". I had to do some brace work inside an old Martin a couple years ago and bought one of the scopes. It was really nice to see the inside of the box on a laptop screen for initial evaluation. Even better to see the repair and glue work real time even with my forearm filling the soundhole.

For the price they are now they should be part of any luthiers toolbox.

Good for wood ID and a host of other magnification things, even measuring the thickness of purfs, etc.

No matter how you are applying glue and cleaning up, seeing it is major advantage.

edit - Plus you can save jpg images as you work.

Brian

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED