Titebond extend gluing times.

[Ron Nossaman]

>       It is also reversible for the next guy who has to get the board out 
> of the piano or Maybe you. Can you imagine having to clean a rim joint 
> that was coated with tight bond, bulduc or some other kind of glue? What 
> a headache.  Its obvious that modern wood glues have strength that cold 
> or hot hide doesn,t but it always amazes me how solidly our antiquated 
> pianos have hung ( and some not)together with animal colagen compound. 
> Imagine how much more difficult it would be to remove key bushings,guide 
> rail bushings, key buttons,hammershanks, soundboards,pinblocks etc for 
> repairs if the glue wasn't as reversible and workable as hide glue. Just 
> a thought in that direction.
>        Dale Erwin

I wonder how necessary the consideration of reversibility is in soundboard 
work. For key bushings, guide rail bushings, etc, etc, I enthusiastically 
agree that (hot, not cold) hide glue is the way to go. But for soundboard 
work? I haven't removed hundreds of soundboards, so I may not have gotten a 
good cross sectional statistical sampling, but I've never been able to get 
one out without trashing it, even when the ribs were half separated from 
the panel. I've always had plenty of spruce chunks and glue to chisel and 
scrape off of the rim. Nor do I find soundboard replacement quite as casual 
and common a repair as replacing a set of hammers or key bushings. How many 
times have you put repeat sets of hammers or key bushings in the same 
piano? How many times for repeat soundboards? The need for reversibility is 
the requirement that the part you are NOT replacing be minimally damaged in 
disassembly. That would be the rim, and Titebond will scrape off of the rim 
with the application of heat just fine. The soundboard being replaced is 
trash or kindling anyway, preferably kindling, so the choice of glue used 
is irrelevant to that.

As another mildly heretical observation, as long as I'm already in trouble. 
Though the old panel is severely compromised across the grain by cumulative 
compression set, it hasn't lost much if anything of it's long grain 
strength. Maybe we should be considering knocking the ribs off of these old 
boards, planing the finish off, and using them as stock to laminate up the 
rib sets for the new panels. After all, that old panel was the "soul of the 
instrument". Why not put it to good use in it's next incarnation?

Ron N