Official Luthiers Forum!

Terry,

I have a similar problem to deal with and am looking foward to the
answers of more experienced colleagues!

Greg

How about plugging the holes with dowel then scribing to the masking tape with a sharp exacto blade and routing out the inside of the bridge area with your dremel or laminate trimmer to a uniform depth. Then fill in with a piece of thin spruce. You can make a slightly oversized new bridge to cover the old outline.Bobc38648.5274421296

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Blues Creek Guitars

I'm not sure what year this instrument is, but I'm guessing it was made in the mid sixties and probably did not originally have a wooden bridge. Gibson used plastic bolt-on briges for 5 or 6 years during this period. Whoever replaced it did the person orderinging the work a big favor for the tone of the instrument, but may have neglected other damage. Damage to the bridgeplate and top (almost inevitable with the plastic bridge) may have contributed to the cracking bridge. Check the bridgeplate carefully; it may need replacement.

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Mark Joy

mjoy Guitars

My only concern with routing out the bridge area is that, while you wind
up with a nice flat top to glue the new bridge to, you have an inherently
weak stress point around the perimeter of the bridge, especially the
leading and trailing edges. I'm not sure how to eliminate that, but I would
think that using either epoxy or Gorilla glue for glueing the patch might
give better strength where the end grain of the patch meets the end grain
of the old top, strengthening this weak point. Just my thoughts, for
whatever they're worth.
Craig

i think you would have better strength to your glue bond using epoxy to glue on the bridge. it will fill the gaps readilly and maintains strength well

I agree with Michael on this fix. Yes routing the area would give a nice flat are to glue to but I'd be concerned with the fact that you decreased the structural integrety of that area. Cover the holes on the inside with masking tape. Make sure they're sealed very well. Float in a liberal amount of thickened epoxy (west systems 3 will work best here) and clamp the bridge on. Leave the tape on until you've cleaned up the squeeze out. Epoxy will float into the voids and fill them better than wood will.
Terken: I'd be pretty skepticle of the strength of wood filler. Unless you are using the good epoxy based stuff in which case, why not just glue it on with epoxy?