Sandable Aliphatic Glue like GLUIT from PICA

Funny, but I've been sanding plain old white Elmers, yellow Elmers, brown Elmers, brown, white and yellow Titebond aliphatic glues for decades. But then that's where the glue lines are thin as they should be on wood working projects.

I found a good, hard drying, sandable alternative to the GLUIT from PICA. This was a glue for situations in which a flexible joint is not of prime importance. It sands and feathers in comparison to Sig Bond or Great Planes yellow glue which sands like dried liquid latex (exaggeration).

After testing every white and yellow glue in the local hardware stores and several art stores, I found that even in thin layers on balsa and basswoord, most of the glues remained flexible and did not feather well when sanded.

They are intended to give a little. That enhances their strength.

Ron's answer was very true for general wood working projects but his answer does not scale well to 1/96 wooden ship models. Most things don't. :-)

Fortunately, the alternative is a white, fast clear drying aliphatic resin musical instrument glue called LMI and sold by Luthier's Merchantile in northern California. When gluing guitars, one wants a bond that is as hard as possible. Flexible glues don't resonate as well as sandable more brittle glues. My sanding tests show that it dries almost as fast as GLUIT and sands just as well and does not have CAs nasty habbit of making basswood as hard as iron wood. :-)

I hope my discovery helps someone else.

Jim Klein

I didn't read the earlier posts in this thread so was wondering -- why are you looking for an alternative for Gluit? I deleted the earlier posts so they are not readily available to me.

Jim Bright

Snip:

The folks at PICA who made GLUIT announced they were moving. They asked for email only but did not resond to mine. Most dealers have already run out of GLUIT and since I only have one refrigerated bottle of it left, I got a little paniky and started asking for help finding an alternative.

Being a guitar player and having a friend who is a great luthier, he suggested instrument repair glue because its final hardness transmits sound through joints but still softens when steam heated (that is how they get a broken guitar apart, they heat it up. :-)

That is basically it. There was only Ron's suggestion of using carpenters glue without using excessive amounts. It is easy to use small amounts when building a book shelf or even a 1/12 doll house, but at 1/48 or 1/96 there needs to be enough glue to hold the parts together without becoming exessive and that boarder is soooo easily crossed.

Jim Klein

Thanks for filling me in on the Gluit situation Jim. I haven't purchased any for some time and didn't know it was hard to get. I noticed it is listed as available on several web sites I have book marked. I haven't tried to order any so, though listed, they might not have any. It's nice to know of an alternative. Thanks, Jim Bright