I got back from my holidays and was just beginning to get over the post holiday blues, tackle a great pile of work that had built up in my absence when the telephone rang "Mr Savage can you come into hospital for that routine operation next Monday?". This was the beginning of a saga that put me out of action for the best part of three weeks, messed up all my plans for work schedules in the late Autumn, early Winter from which I am still only now recovering. Small business are always very prone to illnesses and accidents and all I can say that in my absence Neil and the others have done a wonderful job to hold things together.

One of the very useful things that came out of your readers survey was a

gentleman who expressed how much he enjoyed the articles and suggested I write on two or three subjects, one of which was glues. We use a number of glues in the workshop, each are used in different situations for different jobs. I will try and describe each glue in turn, how we use it and in what sort of situation.

Firstly, animal glue — This in many ways is the traditional cabinetmakers

glue. It is made by first soaking either small square sheets or more usually

pearls of dried glue. The sheets need to be cracked with a hammer to bring

them into smaller sizes, the pearls are a little more easy to manage. The idea

is to cover the pearls with enough water and give them a stir so that all the

surfaces are evenly coated. As the pearls absorb water so one would keep the pot

topped up. This is best done two or three hours before the glue is heated. In

the process of soaking the pearls or sheets will have nearly doubled in volume. It is essential now to strain away any unabsorbed water, melt the glue by applying gentle heat in a double boiler. The old fashioned glue pot has now very largely been replaced by an electrostatically controlled glue pot where heat of exactly the right temperature is applies, old fashioned workshops like our own don't have such modern contraptions and we content ourselves with putting the double boiler on the top of the stove. The worst thing you can have is a new batch of glue , invariably it is too thin and runny. The consistency of the glue is best learned from experience , but it should be thick enough to pour in a stream from the glue brush, but rattle when hitting the surface of the glue in a glue pot. Weak glue is a pain to use and the thick stuff tends to be difficult to handle. You will soon get used to this if the burner is on for any length of time as your glue is changing consistently all the time throughout the day as water evaporates from the surface of the glue pot. If the glue gets too stiff, simply add a drop more

water, if it is too runny, however, you simply have to wait for water to evaporate from the pot for it to acquire the right consistency. The golden rule however is never boil the animal glue or it will get considerably weaker.

Animal glue has the great merit of being a reversible, so that a securely glued joint can be taken apart by a skilled restorer and to my mind this is a very strong argument for using it. Any person hoping to make furniture that will last a decent length of time, must consider how the piece will be restored or repaired. I wonder sometimes how restorers are going to deal with all the late 20th century furniture glued together with modern resin and your epoxy glues. Animal glue has many virtues, particularly for hand veneering. It is also useful in situations where one can't easily apply a cramp. Animal glue chills or grabs as the glue cools down. In a cool workshop this can mean just holding the two components together for 15 or 20 seconds before the glue grabs. The full process of drying out and acquiring strength and this glue certainly has a great deal of strength can take two or three days, though a fairly strong bond is gained after eight hours. Sadly I can't report that we are maintaining a grand old tradition and gluing all our furniture together with animal glue. Maintaining and running a glue pot of this type is a fiddlesome business and I must say I won't miss the characteristic smell of a glue pot bubbling with animal glue — there was always the sweet odour of death about it.

Although we bring the animal glue pot out for the occasional bit of hand veneering and those tricky situations where cramps can't be applied, most of our work these

days is done with a far more convenient glue that is PVA or white glue.

PVA I think stands for Poly Vinyl Acetate, the glue has been around for most of my working life and as far as I am concerned it has proved its remarkable strength and holding power in general purpose cabinetmaking. We buy our PVA from the same people who supply us with screws and metal studding. Their rep comes round once every few weeks and pesters Neil with tempting special offers and one of their sidelines is particularly good PVA glue sold in 5 litre containers. Be careful who you buy your PVA from as in my experience not only are PVA glues variable but a even good firm can change the

quality within a relatively short time. Most PVA's look the same but can have relatively different working characteristics. We go for a PVA that has a good "open time". The open time is the time that you take to apply the glue to all the surfaces of your glue up. If you do this very carefully with a brush or roller, then you can be fiddling around for several minutes. Combine this with a warm workshop or a hot sunny day and a fast tacking glue and the PVA will be half dried before you bring the job together. Indeed if the glue is big and complex and the day is hot, then think about using a glue other than PVA. We recon that generally we have less than 10 minutes open time with most PVA glues so get a friend to help with glue ups.

I like using PVA with joints such as mortice and tenons as the glue has a slight elasticity about it and as the tenon can have the tendency to expand or contract within the mortice, I think that this elasticity is used to some advantage in this situation. PVA is pretty good when you are using blond woods such as sycamore or maple as the glue line tends to be clear. I did some years ago try an alphatics resin version of PVA which dried with a particularly nasty yellow glue line. I think the Americans are particularly fond of this glue but I can't say that I see any greater advantages in using it.

The term glue line is really a misnoma for if your joints are properly made S~c~j

there should not be a glue line simply the clean meeting of timber and timber.

The other glue that we seem to use in large quantities is ‘Cscamite", this is a resin glue that comes in a powder form and in that state has a very long shelf life providing one keeps the tin closed. When you come to use it, it is necessary to mix a small amount of the cascamite powder with the prescribed amount of tap water. This can be a bit of a fiddle, but the advantage of using this is that one can have a good ten minutes of open time to get your

components painted with glue before the whole job is brought together. We would use this glue if the glue up was at all complex or if the day was at all warm or the craftsman at all windy. Most craftsmen are windy in a glue up situation for there can be one or two months work at stake. Our glue ups are invariably accompanied by a lot of pre—match tension and general teasing of the poor devil involved. If you have done your job right, you will have thought it all through, assembled all the cramps you want, sorted out a selection of glue blocks, glue brushes, rags, the occasional lump hammer, and possibly a kettle of hot water. These will have been laid out in position as dictated by the dry assembly — you did do a dry run didn't you?

There are a few rules that we have developed for glue ups that may help you avoid the inevitable mistakes:—

1) If you can, do a dry run — it helps you work out what cramps you need, where you are going to put them and what kind of glue blocks you will require to apply pressure in exactly the right place;

2) Gather everything together in a structured sensible way;

3) If you are using bar clamps, make sure they are all of the same type;

4) When you paint the glue on the joint areas, apply a thin coat using a small brush (try your local art shop for a selection of small hogs hair artists brushes). Paint the glue on both surfaces ie, on the tenon and on the mortice;

5) Make sure all inside areas that you will have no access to once the glue up has occurred are waxed or pre—finished. This will help any glue squeeze out to be removed with out fuss or bother;

6) Do your glue—up with a friend , it is very tempting to do it all so nobody will see your cock ups but it is a far safer policy to do it with somebody. Two heads are always better than one if things go wrong;

7) Put your cramps on carefully and squeeze them up in an ordered structured manner. Remember what you need for a good glue up, is a good joint, a little bit of glue and little bit of pressure — too much pressure can cause the whole thing to go into twist,'

8) Remember to include all your components in your glue up. We had one chap who memorably glued up a dovetailed carcass, he worried so much about hammering his dovetails together that he forgot to put in the two or three of the three drawer rails that should have been jointed to the inside faces of the carcass. What are these bits of wood? (Oh bleep bleep bleep) came the answer.

The other glues that we occasionally use in the workshop are "araldite" and

Araldite rapid." These are particularly good glues for dealing with those exotic

hardwoods that can't be stuck with anything else. These glues are also very useful for dealing with those situations where a coloured filler is required to give some greater integrity small knot hole or blemish in the timber. The coloured pigments can be added to the glue to make a strong filler. Care and judgement has to be exercised when using this. Firstly the colouring has to be carefully matched to how the board will look —not just now but in two or three years time when darkened by sunlight. And secondly, a judgement has to be made up as to whether it wouldn't be better to put in a wooden inlay or patch.

On those rare occasions when you need very long open time, we have used a glue called "Aerolite". This is a two part glue, the first part is applied to one component and the second to the other and the idea is the glue only starts to dry or go off when the two components are brought together. If you extremely windy about your glue up, this is the glue for you, it allows you to fiddle and faff around as much as you like. One disadvantage is a glue line with a slightly purple colour to it, but then we don't have glue lines do we?