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Bamboo Bass?

#41
The local hardwoods store in my town sells bamboo in 4x8 sheets, and when they first rolled them out, building a bass out of it was the first thing that came to mind (though perhaps because I was shopping for a fingerboard at the time...). It was 3/4" thick and a pair of laminates would probably work well. I'd try gorilla glue over regular wood glue, it'll bond to just about anything, which shouldn't be a problem in what I assumed to be would be a difficult wood to work with.

I'd stay away from a bamboo neck, though. It might be strong enough if laminated properly, but it would be hell to shape.
 
#43
I worked for a very small company (owner + 2 employess) building basses, several years back, they liked to use Gorilla glue to glue on the body wings. I hated using the stuff- it is super messy and keeps on growing into a staining foaming mess thats a pain to clean up and deal with. I've never used it since.

Gorilla Glue may have its time + place- i'm just not sure what it is yet.
 
#44
bassy7 said:
... it is super messy and keeps on growing into a staining foaming mess thats a pain to clean up and deal with...
Click to expand...

I used it once... just once and it wasn't a pleasant experience. But I keep reading praises for the stuff so I thought I may as well try it again, surely I did something wrong the one time I used it.

So thanks for posting this... it saved me a lot of time and hassle of recreating a bad experience.
 
#45
I'm actually using gorilla glue to build a bass right now. Clamp it correctly and expansion won't be a problem, plus it's stainable unlike wood glue so the seams will disappear completely when you finish it. A little bit goes a LONG way, so run just a few lines over the pieces you're gluing. It will spread itself out just fine. Just don't use it on anything you'd ever need to disassemble for a repair (i.e., don't glue the fretboard on with it in case you ever should need to replace the truss-rod).
 
#46
"don't glue the fretboard on with it in case you ever should need to replace the truss-rod"
Or in case you don't want it to expand into the truss rod slot! ;-)

I agree that the ability to absorb stain sounds a little cool. My experience with stainable wood filler leads me to this....I don't think any transparent or semi-tranparent stain will really make a bad glue line disappear completely- but it may help to mask it a bit. Have you tried staining over this stuff yet? If not, let me know what you results were if you happen to end up with a less than perfect glue line.

If any one of you luthiers out there see real some good reasons for using gorilla glue for instrument building- let me know. Perhaps I am missing out on something, but I just never liked it. I quickly developed a NO gorilla glue stance on all my projects!
 

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