Write 31 Days- Day 8 Creativity with heat

I greatly enjoy working on old instruments. There's is something magical about opening up an instrument that has only had a small round window to the world since it was sealed up in a factory in the 1930s. It is exciting to see small stamps and production scribbles likely never seen by two or three people at the factory (and likely only understood by them).

And in the modern day where instruments are often assembled with epoxy or urethane and dang near impossible to dis-assemble the instruments of old were, in large part, held together with old fashioned hide glue. As its name suggests, hide glue is obtained for processing animal hides (mostly) to get the collagen proteins removed. It hardens at room temperature and is often supplied in cans of granules. If kept dry it can last almost indefinitely and a properly glued joint can hold for a very long time. Think hundreds of years as in old antique furniture.

Instruments constructed with hide glue have a nifty little ability to be un-glued by the addition of heat. Once the glue reaches a critical temperature of 140-160F it will release and your part is now free. Old hide glue will stick to new hide glue as well (newer glues won't do that usually).

So what has this got to do with creativity?

Well let me tell you- knowing that at a certain temperature hide glue will release is one thing, getting a particular segment of hide glue to reach that temperature can be quite another. Case in point is this 1937-38 Supertone Lone ranger 3/4-scale guitar I have. It is in need of love and affection of the restorative manner so I pulled the back off of it (its a kid's guitar and I can't get my meaty man-hand into the sound hole) and needed to remove the mis-positioned lower braces. Coming from the heyday of hide glue construction meant I should just lay some heat onto it and they would pop right off. In theory.

Supertone Lone Range guitar with the back removed and
needing the two braces on the (R) removed

To help things along I placed a heating pad underneath the guitar to drive some heat into the bottom of the glue joint through the sound board. It wouldn't be enough to release the joint but it would mean I would be 30-40F closer to that magic number. Now I'm sure I'm not the first guy to come up with the heating pad idea, but it was a new thought to me as I pondered how to get to the glue to release. Creative in the eyes of the world? Probably not. Creative in my small part of the planet? You bet.There were other ways I though to get heat into that joint: spatulas heated in boiling water, hot air from hair dryers and others. Again, I know there are better, more efficient and less time-consuming ways to do this. Actually, I think there are but I don't know. I have a simple fact (hide glue releases with heat) and my brain tries to come up with ways to get heat into that glue joint to release.

Creativity in the guitar shop.