Regarding the right glue for right job.

[Taffy Evans]

Hi, there was a post recently started by Walter regarding the best glues for certain guitar repair and/or building tasks. I came across this photo of a job I had some time ago where epoxy was used to re-glue this bridge by somebody.

I could not get the glue to give way using heat, not without damaging the guitar anyway, so I had to plane it off. The picture shows the old bridge and the new replacement one.

Taff 

[Walter W Wright]

yeesh

from the pic it looks like the bridge was largely glued over the finish?

what did you use for the replacement bridge? for a long time now i've defaulted to hot hide glue for bridges, both for reversibility and for creep resistance 

[Taffy Evans]

Hi. This job was so long ago that I have forgotten the details, but going by the details in the story below I would not be surprised if the bridge was glued to lacquer.

Short story...]I hope]

In the mid to late 1970s, I was doing a lot of work on Ovation guitars, [ where I learned how not to build guitars] I contacted the manufacturer to find out what glue they used in their guitars, but they declined to share that info.

However, long story short, a visitor from interstate to my workshop happened to be a scientist and when I told him of the glue problem, he offered to research it for me.

What I did not expect was to get, in the mail, a full breakdown of the contents of that glue. I did not understand a word except for the last couple of lines, "  This is a construction adhesive and I would suggest not suitable for guitar building. It would normally be applied using a caulking gun".

I just went looking for that report and found a letter from Ovation Instruments dated 1975 requesting my services as a warranty repair agent.

Cheers Taff

[Walter W Wright]

wow!

in a similar vein, when i went looking for the right glue to reattach those artificial ebony bridges to those artificial wood tops on X-series martins, it turns out they use a special CA glue from 3M called PR600, with a 2oz bottle selling on amazon for like $250!

so yeah, i totally didn't buy any

[Steve G]

Digikey sells 3M PR600 for about $33

[Walter W Wright]

thank you!

[Enis Moran]

They used a LOT of epoxy, especially in the Celebrity series and such...