I just purchased a slow cooker that as luck would have it maintains a pot of water at 140-150 degrees, the perfect temp.for making hide glue. I also discovered that if you soak the rawhide over night then put it in a food liquidiser it chops it into tiny bits in seconds, after 12 hrs, it has all but dissolved into glue. virtually no effort. I tested the glue as per b.b.4. glue test procedure I glued small blocks of wood together to measure the force it took to break the joint, Every time the wood fibres broke apart and the glue didnt get chance to fail. I also found out that rawhide dog chews are cheap, easy to get and make as good glue as raw deer skin, because in my tests I compared the 2 glues. The wood broke before the glue with both glues, so it is hard to say which is the strongest Maybe I could do it again with harder wood?, but both make good glue . The cooker cost £12/$25 and the chews £4/$8 for a 2lb bag and you get a lot of glue. So cheap and easy I wanted to tell the bowyers world. It even smells quite good too!! Heres a few pics of the set up.
[attachment deleted by admin]
