A natural Glue

[Toddy]

Flour and water was the glue used as wallpaper paste before the stuff came in packets.
I know of one old painter who was redecorating a farmhouse and cooked up a pailful of the paste and set it outside to cool....where it was promptly scoffed by a pig ! The farmer on hearing his protests simply assured him that it would do the pig no harm

Bluebells make a good glue that used to be used by bookbinders. Spit on the crushed bulbs and crush them up some more. The saliva helps break out the starchy stuff that becomes the glue. I know that the archery reenacators use it for holding feathers in place before binding them.

Rabbit droppings are a cleaner admixture to pine resin (and generally finer) than charcoal. I don't know if one is stronger than the other though. Forestwalker might ?

Fish heads boiled up and reduced make the original 'seccotine' glue. It's not waterproof, but it's very flexible. Very good for thin basketry which isn't likely to get wet....i.e. layering up very thin birch bark for berry or herb baskets. Used to be used for model boatmaking (wooden ones) where it wouldn't crack if things moved very slightly with atmospheric moisture, and for preserving insects.

Off cuts of rawhide boiled up and simmered make superb glue. Easily tried using a rawhide dog chew.

Interesting thread

cheers,
M

 

[bushwacker bob]

Interesting thread

cheers,
M

Maybe you could make it a 'sticky'

 

[mountainm]

Maybe you could make it a 'sticky'

Off with you, go on, get your coat....

 

[Toddy]

Maybe you could make it a 'sticky'

Boom! Boom!
M

 

[forestwalker]

Bluebells make a good glue that used to be used by bookbinders. Spit on the crushed bulbs and crush them up some more. The saliva helps break out the starchy stuff that becomes the glue. I know that the archery reenacators use it for holding feathers in place before binding them.

I think bacially any starch would work, about the same. Reeds (Phragmites), cattails...

I thought bookpinders even these days sometimes use the hide&hoof based stuff?

Rabbit droppings are a cleaner admixture to pine resin (and generally finer) than charcoal. I don't know if one is stronger than the other though. Forestwalker might ?

I have never read -- or performed -- a well controlled study on this. I've used both, and both work about the same in my experience (i.e. batch to batch differences obscures any other pattern). I have seen reports archaeologically of everything from human hair by way of animal droppings (various herbivore species) and grass to charcoal. If I wanted a stiffer glue I'd use a finer material (rabbit or charcoal), for a more flexible one someting more fibrous. Also of course fats and waxes.

Fish heads boiled up and reduced make the original 'seccotine' glue. It's not waterproof, but it's very flexible. Very good for thin basketry which isn't likely to get wet....i.e. layering up very thin birch bark for berry or herb baskets. Used to be used for model boatmaking (wooden ones) where it wouldn't crack if things moved very slightly with atmospheric moisture, and for preserving insects.

Off cuts of rawhide boiled up and simmered make superb glue. Easily tried using a rawhide dog chew.

Also commercial gelatin, as sold in the grocery store, will work as a hide glue. Hide glue is also sold to us -- said the pig-turd in the cream bucket -- tradtional woodworkers. And isinglas is basically fish based gelatin and used in some crafts, and thus sold.

 

[rg598]

Here is an easy way to make hide glue: http://woodtrekker.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-make-hide-glue.html

 

[Bernard55]

Hide glue is water resistant in a strange kind of way, in that it needs warmth to unset it. It can be made waterproof by adding alum, (1% by weight or 2% by volume).

Traditionally it was used as size, because of its resistance to water, though it does absorb water.

I am trying to build some kayak where I use cotton as skin ; but I have 2 problems ; first and most important the skin sort of shrink as tight as a drum skin when it is warm , and get completly loose when the wheater, or the water, is cold . Any body can tell me if a hide glue with alum or tanic acid can stabilize the cotton, so that it stop shrinking or getting loose depending of temperature ? Or is there any other method ??
Second trouble is that cotton when it get in contact with moisture , get rotten really fast ; so if hide glue is Waterproof with alum , but , at the same time is said to absorb water , there is something I do not catch !! What is waterproof , if it absorb water ???