Something I ran across that I thought might interest you guys.

Something that is common knowlege around the forums is that most glues are heat reactive. Well, I read in a guitar repair book that they use a hot knife to remove different parts of the instrument without damaging the instrument further. The hot knife that I have was purchased through Stewart McDonald a few years back and the hardest part of it was how to heat the knife. Basically the knife is a wedge shape with a fairly sharp edge.

Here is how I found an easy way to use it for our purposes.

I am using my Top Flight sealing iron for a heat source that is cranked all the way up.
Lay the knife against the base for about a minute initially to heat up the knife.
Then press the knife at the seam between the two pieces of wood, it works better between two pieces of plywood.
It will take a little time to start to split the two thicknesses of wood. reheat often, but after the knife is hot will take between 15 to 30 seconds to reheat for about 5 or 6 seconds of work.
Rock the knife back and forth as you are pressing it through the glue.

This method has been used for many years for instrument repair where they used hide glue, but will also work for epoxy, CA and also with wood glue.

great tip !!

Nice work! Too bad they didn't have something like that in electric.

i wonder if you could mod the knife blade onto a soldering gun, that way you dont have to reheat

I think you are thinking of something like this. It uses a #11 blade so it is on the small side, but might be usefull.


http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXSD16&P=7

For $6, even if it takes 30 seconds longer, it looks like a repair tool to me. I will order one next time I order from Tower. Thanks for that. Can you imagine being able to unglue and fix something that shifted while the glue was setting?

My weller came with that hot knife tip, it works great on cutting foam too.

Great tip! So then I learned somthing new today, thanks