  The main theorem of this paper is a generalisation of well known results
about Dehn surgery to the case of attaching handlebodies to a simple
3-manifold. The existence of a finite set of `exceptional' curves on the
boundary of the 3-manifold is established. Provided none of these curves is
attached to the boundary of a disc in a handlebody, the resulting manifold is
shown to be word hyperbolic and `hyperbolike'. We then give constructions of
gluing maps satisfying this condition. These take the form of an arbitrary
gluing map composed with powers of a suitable homeomorphism of the boundary of
the handlebodies.
