Problem: a WaRpEd guitar top!

this seventy sixty thirty-five came into the shop because my customer felt that the action had gotten high more than he was used to and the reason for that was because the bridge was coming loose and here wasn't paying attention to it I could slide a piece of paper all under the backside as it peeled loose from the Spruce and that raised that saddle up enough that he could notice it it's a good thing that he noticed his action was high and brought it him because if you leave a bridge that's loose on the rear sitting on a guitar it eventually will pop off just kidding but I have seen that happen in the case of this guitar we've got a hard flat piece of Ebony sitting on a slightly domed top and it rocks a bit so it's not a perfect fit it doesn't make sense to me to glue this flat piece of Ebony onto this slight hump of spruce I could shave this down with a knife or sandpaper and flatten it but I don't want to do that that's a good glue surface and it's the right thickness and then I'll take a silver pencil because I can see that on ebony and start marking out where I think the high spots are it's not a regular shape it's right in that center of the bridge and I'll remove wood there and see how it fits I moved on over to my drill press table because it's flat clean cast iron and I'm gonna lay down a little tape just to get a centerline the center line is going to let me know when I'm sanding this bridge on Center to my little Teflon riser it's a little oval of Teflon that's more or less shaped in the area that I want to sand you could use masking tape cardboard whatever suits your fancy that holds the Teflon down because I'm going to cover over it now with some 120 grit self-sticking sandpaper and put a centerline on that I'm going to sit the hump right over the Teflon fret damn I'll tell you it's almost impossible to hold a curved bridge like that so I'm going to use this little prop that I use when shaping the bridge today I'm using it upside down just as a handle now I'm ready to sand and I know where the humps gotta be to be right in here it's better already I'm going to take a little bit more but it's already sitting much more flush around we're getting there sometimes all interrupt my sanding with a little scraping go outside of the area and just scrape some of that wood going out towards the edge it would be even hard to measure this it's over a long area that's a good fit it's got that nice belly into it no I want to make sure that it's really sitting on all the edges not so much on the guitar top but on a flat surface I want to know that with to itself this bridge is flat on around the edges and you'll see a little dish in the center then I know when I clamp it on it's really going to be tight on the edges and that's where it comes loose anyway don't want that coarser sandpaper that's 120 masking tape makes a good little sawdust picker-upper you don't want this I just want a piece of 220 it's the perfect grit to do the kissing do the silver is all gone and I can still see my concavity that's good ready to clean up and put on there's a point when it pops right into its own footprint that's a good fit not rocking and most important of all it's sitting down on the edge all the way around just a little bit you could get a small feeler gauge under that but you won't be able to when I clamp it everything will come out equal the wings will sit down tight and this will be a great glue job I'm going to let that dry for 24 hours you could cheat on that a bit 12 hours overnight probably but I'll wait till tomorrow I put this bridge on at 3:30 yesterday and took the clamps off this morning at 9:30 so that's 18 hours then I messed around with the saddle and the bridge pins for maybe an hour that's 19 hours of drying time it fits the top perfect it's dry as a bone and as a great song so it's back in the saddle again where a friend is a friend

Channel: StewMac

Views: 436,807

Keywords: bridge, warped, hump, sanding, sandpaper

Id: RLALS2cB-IA

Length: 5min 20sec (320 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2016