Building bridges......

Today I decided it was time to make the bridges for the twins. I used the same design I put on the SJ as I like the look. I won't get into great detail of how I do it, but I do have quite a few pictures of the process. Basically I cut the shape using a template on my router, I cut the wings using a chisel, saw, and file, I radius the top, round the edges and then cut the slot. I should get to polishing the twins sometime next week as time permits. Things have been (and will be) busy around here so I haven't spent much time working on them. I need to get moving if I want them done by Christmas.

First I cut the blank to shape using this template. One side is one half of the shape and the other side is the other half. It makes very quick work out of shaping the blank.

The two shaped blanks.

I then cut slots to define the wings down to 1/8" from the bottom.

I chiseled out the bulk of the wood then used a file to flatten the wings.

I then sanded the top to radius bringing the edges down to 1/8" above the wing surface.

I then filed and sanded the leading edge round and the trailing edge to a 45 degree angle.

Into the slotting jig.....

and I end up with two slotted bridges. I still need to drill the pin holes and sand/polish them but I can do that later. The observant reader might notice that these two bridges have a slightly shallower compensation angle than my others. That is because this is a short scale instrument. I have been using just under a 5 degree angle for the long scale but after some research I learned that a 3.5 degree angle works well with a short scale guitar. It is still a little more of an angle than the standard off the shelf Martin style bridge. The entire job getting these to this point took about 2 hours.