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What Happened to Hide Glue? The Animal Glue That Built Peter Cooper’s Fortune
By Grain & Temper 46:33 14 views on YouTube Oct 27, 2026
In 1821 Peter Cooper paid two thousand dollars for a glue factory next to the slaughterhouses of New York. Hot animal glue made him rich, helped build a college where Abraham Lincoln would speak, and held the world's cha... Show more
In 1821 Peter Cooper paid two thousand dollars for a glue factory next to the slaughterhouses of New York. Hot animal glue made him rich, helped build a college where Abraham Lincoln would speak, and held the world's chairs, violins, books and wooden propellers together. And unlike any modern glue, it could be undone with heat and water. So what happened to hide glue? This is the story of the oldest glue on Earth: the 8,000-year-old collagen glue from a cave near the Dead Sea, the Egyptian workshops, Peter Cooper's glue works, how hide glue is made and why it grabs like a clamp, the violin makers and furniture makers who depended on it, the wooden propellers that showed its weakness, the milk glues and synthetics that replaced it, the 1944 Mosquito crashes blamed on glue, and the luthiers, piano technicians and conservators who still use it today. SOURCES - Archaeology Magazine and Wikipedia, Nahal Hemar Cave (Neolithic collagen glue) - Encyclopaedia Britannica, Glue - Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carpenters at Work, Tomb of Rekhmire; IntechOpen, Woodworking Techniques in Ancient Egypt - International Journal of Conservation Science (2021), Tutankhamun's gilded bed - Archaeology Magazine (2026), proteins in ancient Egyptian paints - Wikipedia: Peter Cooper; Animal glue; Adhesive; Bloom (test); Steinway D-274; De Havilland Mosquito; Aerolite; Polyvinyl acetate; Elmer's Products; Epoxy; Araldite; Cyanoacrylate - NYC Parks, Frost Playground history (Peter Cooper glue works) - REB Research, Peter Cooper timeline; ASME, Peter Cooper - J. A. Taggart, The Glue Book (1913) - Brooklyn Public Library, citing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Slate (2012), What do horses have to do with glue? - Bob Flexner, Popular Woodworking, Hide Glue: How It's Made (Milligan and Higgins) - StewMac, Dan Erlewine on hide glue - Woodcraft, hide glue guides - W. Patrick Edwards, Benefits of Animal Glue; Fine Woodworking, Hammer Veneering with Hide Glue - L. D. Davis, Glass Chipping with Hide Glue -
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