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Hi-

I bought 100 Madagascar rosewood bridge blanks inexpensively. About 80 are flatsawn, the rest are rift or quartered. All are dry and seasoned for 1-2 years. Can these flatsawn pieces be used successfully for steel string bridges? I remember in a recent thread that a few mentioned that madrose is crack prone. None of these have any drying cracks and they seem stable.








Also, for the riftsawn pieces would you orient them with the end grain like blank A or blank B? Does it even matter?







Thanks-

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John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

Madagascar Rosewood makes great bridges. I really like it personally. Rift sawn is fine but I would shy away from flat sawn. But its not a big loss, you can resaw those flatsawn blanks into bookmatched headplates.

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Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
Web: https://www.jfrenchguitars.com/

i would prefer blank B...

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everything you know is wrong

I often wonder why flatsawn wood for bridge blanks is frowned upon. I realize it's probably more prone to warping...maybe...but quartered bridges are prone to cracking at the saddle slot, and across the bridge pins, aren't they? So if one uses a flatsawn piece, that would virtually eliminate that problem. In fact,

Maybe this is a foolish notion, but it has crossed my mind...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, thats exactly why a lot of classical makers prefer riftsawn.

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Instagram: @jfrenchluthier
Web: https://www.jfrenchguitars.com/

I use riftsawn whenever possible because I worry about splitting with quatersawn (though I do remember Howard Klepper saying that wood tends to split radially across the grain and that maybe quartersawn isn't always bad). In fact, two of my 70+ year old Martin's have quartersawn bridges that are still perfect.
Check out this thread though.

Bridge Grain Orientation

I also remember, I think it was Mario, saying he liked flat sawn (may have been Alan )so take you choice.

Of the bridge blanks you show in the photo, there is only about 5 or 6 that I would call flatsawn and wouldn't be happy to use for a bridge.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin ,it would be interesting to know which ones you would consider to be flat sawn.I always thought it was the grain running flat at the end grain .
                          James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee