Dear Readers of MMD,  I recall reading in a recent MMD bulletin that
using Titebond Liquid Hide Glue is a bad idea.  This disturbed me
somewhat, because I had already used this glue in reattaching the six
monster exhauster pneumatics in the steamboat pump out of my Duo-Art
upright.  As far as I can tell the pump is now operating properly;
I won't be able to tell for sure until a friend finishes work on a
replacement motor pulley.

In the meantime, I have been working my way through the expression box.
After being amazed by the amount of hardware that is screwed to the
outside of the box, I removed the two knife valve pneumatics, and they
are now ready to be recovered.  Getting them off was easy; there was a
leather gasket between the pneumatics and the bottom of the box.

Taking the box apart was a different story.  It experienced several
trips into our chest freezer, but obdurately refused to yield to my
increasingly vigorous tapping with a flat-bladed knife and a mallet
around the obvious seam.  I was hesitant to try the John Ward technique
of whacking the floor of the box and yelling "Geronimo", which worked
with my Half Duo-Art expression box, but it wasn't obvious to me where
to apply the impact in the full expression box.  I also was concerned
about actually going right through the floor.

Eventually the box gave way, not without some damage to the edges;
there was no leather gasket.  I have glued the major splinters back
where they came from, and used wood filler on the smaller craters.

After replacing the two large pouches in the bottom half of the box,
and re-graphiting the pallet valve in the top half, I installed a new
leather gasket on the top of the bottom half of the box.  That was
straightforward; I simply installed the leather strips one at a time,
warming the wooden surface with an iron before applying the glue.

Using hot hide glue to join the two halves of the box, however, is
going to be difficult.  By the time I have gone around all the surfaces
that require glue, the glue will have started to gel.  Titebond glue
seems to me to be the answer -- but is it?

John Phillips in Hobart, Tasmania

 [ MMD articles about liquid hide glue are indexed at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/L/liquid.html 
 [ Articles about hide glue are indexed at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/H/hide.html  -- Robbie