What is your favorite glue for backings, overlays, and risers?

[kiltedcelt]

I'm getting back into making bows and in the past I used Titebond II for making linen backed bows and anything else I did that involved wood backings or bamboo, I used Smooth-On EA-40 epoxy. I like the strength of the epoxy, but the hotbox curing was always a pain in the rear. I'm going to be making some new bows with both hickory and bamboo backings and I'd kinda prefer using a glue that didn't require the hotbox cure. I see that the Urac glue is no longer sold and the replacement Unibond gets pretty mixed reviews. Any thoughts on just using Titebond III to glue bamboo and hickory backings onto non-oily, non-tropical bow woods? How about the Titebond hide glue? I know the hide glue is water soluble, but I always finish my bows with some type of oil hard oil finish often with a wax over that. I remember reading in one of the TBB books about the various glues and that the hide glues were pretty impressive in terms of holding power. Ideally I'd be able to use the same glue for the backings as well as for the tip overlays and gluing on a riser. Thoughts or suggestions?

[takefive]

I'm pretty new to bow making; only been at it for about a year.  I've glued up 3 hickory backed tri-lams and 2 BBOs using Unibond and have had no problems with it.  I think it bonds great.  I used Titebond 3 to glue the handles on the first 2 and that bonded great also.  I guess I prefer Unibond for that now just because it fills gaps better if you have less than perfectly mated surfaces.  I like Locktite Gel super glue for tip overlays.  I think the wood would break before the bond gives with that stuff.

[Roy from Pa]

Use smooth on, it will cure in 24 hours at 70 degrees.

[delongbows]

What Roy said.

[LittleBen]

Only advantage to TBIII in my opinion is that it's non-toxic ... or as close to it as you can get ... i wouldn't eat it. Clean up is a cinch, and it's reversible with a little heat .... if your backign splinters you can replace it fairly quickly without grinding it all off.

Hide glue is very strogn btu is not gap filling IIRC. It is easily reversible. Probably better suited to restoring antique furniture than to gluing a bow which could see rain.

[bamboo]

glueing is mostly fit-----------

[red hill]

Favorite - smooth on.

[kiltedcelt]

Responses seem to be almost evenly split between epoxy and Titebond. I posted this on the other forums I read and the responses seemed to be pretty much the same - about a 50/50 split between the two glue types. I don't think I can trust the initial gluing surfaces of my first few builds getting back into this, so I'm going to go with Smooth-On. I've used it extensively in the past and had good luck with it for lams/backing, riser block, and tip ovelays. On top of that, I have the option of curing it at 70F (room temps) for 24 hours or using my knock-down heat box to cure for 6 hours.

[macbow]

I've been using the unibond 800 for my bamboo backed glue ups and have had no problems.
The clean up of brushes and,mixing can (tuna) is different  than the Urac.

Being cheap is why I use the unibond. But looking at the containers I'd probably get twice the volume with smooth on at about twice the price.
Think I may switch to smooth on after using up my supply.

[Roy from Pa]

Mac ya have a PM.