Glue / Horses

Apparently people used to make glue from horses.
Does anyone know how it's done, and what the quality of glue is like? Does one need a shirehorse to get a decent amount of glue, or would a shetland pony produce a lot?

Not that I have a horse (dead or not), just wondering. Have been for years, but never found anyone who could tell me.

Thanks.

What have you been sniffin maann...

And if you type "horse glue" into google you get this interesting read

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhorseglue.html

Originally Posted by Abyss

And if you type "horse glue" into google you get this interesting read

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhorseglue.html

Yes, that is indeed an interesting read. Doesn't give details about the quality of the glue tho. I don't expect it is as good as say Evostick, but surely better than "Gloy" - the stuff I used to use at school. And I really doubt whether it's "sniffable" as "The Mass" alludes to!

I guess if the weather is indeed rubbish on Sunday, I can spend some hours in front of Google, searching for more detail on the subject.

Originally Posted by rpwoodman

Yes, that is indeed an interesting read. Doesn't give details about the quality of the glue tho. I don't expect it is as good as say Evostick, but surely better than "Gloy" - the stuff I used to use at school. And I really doubt whether it's "sniffable" as "The Mass" alludes to!

I guess if the weather is indeed rubbish on Sunday, I can spend some hours in front of Google, searching for more detail on the subject.

So, we just bought an old house on the Hudson river in NJ. And, I think they used horse glue to glue some stuff. And, first of all, its quite sticky, sort of tacky when you scrape into it. Still, after 70 years. And, it stinks to high heaven when you are scraping it. Seriously seriously rank smelling. Hard to describe really, definately like animal, but, nasty. This is why I think its horse glue. I might be totally wrong though.

Thats all I know.

I'm not surprised it stinks!


Horse glue is made by melting down the hoof. Cheesy feet is not exclusive to humans it would seem.


It was a technique used by native American Indians, who didn't like to waste anything provided by nature. So even the seemingly most useless of things on a horse, a hoof, was boiled to make glue.

I hope they didnt do that with my horse

[northwind]

It's sort of like organ donation... You might die, but your legacy remains as you give life to a hundred non-lick DL envelopes.