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making hide glue

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Winchester:
Thinking of making my own hide glue rather than buying it but I don't have any cured hide. Would some fresh deer hide work? Also have heard the hooves can be used too? I do have a dehydrator if the hide needs to be dried if that would work.

dmenzies1950:
All hide glue is, is protein separating from animal parts when heat is added. You probably could use a raw deer hide, but I'm not sure. I usually use bits of rawhide, sinew and yes hooves. I have even used rawhide doggie chew treats. They all contain animal protein. Make sure that you don't get the solution too hot, or you'll have an inferior result. I find 150 to 160 degrees will do the trick. By the way, you can use bones as well but some say the glue is not as good as using the parts that I already mentioned. Have fun! That's the name of the game when you are building bows.     
                                                                         Dale     

JW_Halverson:
In a word, yes.

The finer you chop up the hide, the higher the yield in glue, so cut it up as fine as you can stand to spend time doing.  Put it all (except the hair and fat) in an ovenproof roasting pan with distilled water and set the temp on your oven as low as you can go, cover tightly, and let it simmer all night long.  If your local water source is low in dissolved minerals you can go with tap water. 

Strain out the solids, and continue in the oven with the lid off the roaster to evaporate water until you are satisfied with the thickness.  Runny syrup is what most people shoot for. 

turtle:
JW's giving you the right info. I find it easier to use an electric crockpot instead of the oven.

JW_Halverson:
My crockpot on it's lowest setting can creep up over boiling.  That's why I went to the oven method.  Lower temps generally make stronger glues, but I have also made rush job glue by boiling scraps on the stove top for about an hour.  The glue was still pretty strong. 

To make bone glue, you first have to dissolve the calcium from the collagen matrix, something you just can't do in a home kitchen setting.  Otherwise all you draw out is the very surface collagen and you'd need 200 lbs of bone to make enough glue to glue a snakeskin to a very short bow. 

Raw deer hide is rawhide.  Other than using sinew scraps (or in my case, whole deer leg sinews) rawhide makes the best glue. 

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