Bespoke Bridge

Let's be honest, that's not an attractive bridge. It's seen a lot of action over the years and it's cracked and, somewhere in the distant past, it's had some gunky filler splodged in to try extend its life. And it's actually a slightly odd bridge. Although it has six holes for bridge pins, you can see along the back there are some filled holes as if this bridge were once strung from the top. There are also two little pearl dots which are usually present to hide small bolts (as they do in this case). These bolts are generally used on bridges that string from the top. But, then, why the bridge-pin holes?

It seems likely that the manufacturer repurposed this bridge from another model, filled the string holes and installed with bolts as normal. Fair enough.

This is all an aside anyway. On to the real work.

The owner wants this sorted but I wasn't able to source an off-the-shelf replacement. This means custom-malking a replacement.

Getting these things off is a pain—as well as the two little bolts under the pearl, this manufacturer epoxies the bridge in position. I may have used swear words.

Once off, though, I grab a nice piece of rosewood and thickness it to about the right height. I carefully measure and mark off the important dimensions, particularly the pin holes and the bolt holes—if these are misaligned or misplaced, the bridge has to go in the bin.

Some careful drilling and we're ready to shape the bridge. In this case, it's a (relatively) easy job as the original doesn't have a lot of sharp edges to curves that need to be replicated. It's easier to replicate those sweeping lines.

Re-attaching the bridge, in this case, means epoxy again. There's a major risk of the bridge sliding about as it's clamped so some very careful preparation was necessary to ensure this didn't happen. Pin-holes and the bolts came in useful in this.

And, you can see the end result in the last image. As it's a nicer piece of rosewood, I think the new bridge actually looks better than the original but, that aside, it's certainly more sound.