Old timers who insist on horse glue for everything are stuck in the past

I watched a guy at a guild meetup last week spend 20 minutes heating up a pot of horse glue for a simple spine repair when PVA would have set in half the time and held just as fine. He kept muttering about 'tradition' but the joint failed overnight because the humidity was wrong. Has anyone else noticed the 'it must be made from an animal' crowd ignoring modern chemistry?

2 comments

2 Comments

karen_west591mo ago

I get where you're coming from, but I gotta say, that old timers case sounds like someone who was rushing and messed up the glue pot temperature. Horse glue is finicky, you have to keep it warm and apply it thin, and if he had it too thick or let it cool down, that's on him not the glue. I've got a chair from the 1800s that's been reglued with hide glue three times over the years, each time held for decades, while a PVA job I did on a dresser in the 90s is already yellowing and cracking at the joints. There's a reason restorers still use it for antiques, it's reversible and you can redo it without damaging the wood, which modern glues can be a bear to undo. Not saying horse glue is always the right call, but it's not just stubbornness, sometimes the old stuff actually works better for the job.

hall.nina1mo ago

Oh man, reminds me of the time my grandpa tried to fix a chair with contact cement and it melted the finish off.