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This 1964-1965 era Martin came into my shop last week. The bridge was not glued to the top. As you can see in the photo. the guitar has been used and abused. The creme area is wood filler and the bridge has been re-glued more than once it appears. The Rosewood bridge plate is not original because someone named George signed and dated it in May, 1974. The plate is very thin and dished out where the pin holes are located. The Spruce under the bridge is heavily damaged and appears to have been repaired with a hard clear glue, maybe epoxy? There are areas where the Rosewood plate is visible and much of the Spruce is missing. Due to the very thin plate and missing top wood, there is a bulge in the top just behind the bridge.

The owner is elderly and merely wants the guitar restored to playability so that he can play for his grandkids.

I've repaired guitars like this in the past with damaged tops by routing down to good wood and then gluing in a Spruce patch before re-gluing the bridge. But I haven't dealt with one this heavily damaged. If I remove the plate there will be a bridge-shaped hole in the top. And there is that bulge to deal with.

I'm thinking about removing the plate and making a new, thicker, and larger replacement. Hopefully this will help flatten the bulge. But I don't want to alter the tone substantially. I may not have a choice. After the new plate is in, I would route out the rest of the damaged top and glue in a patch before re-gluing the bridge.

Any experienced repair guys have thoughts about this? Thanks!

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It will probably be alright.

Please dont go the path of routing down until you get good wood, your cutting through the thing thats providing some of the strength, "The grain".

The top needs to be steamed and clamped to get rid of some of that bulge

Get rid of that bridge plate, yes make up a new one and use a good 3mm thick piece of maple, make sure the bridge plate is glued properly and glued to your x brace.

Then I would just epoxy the bridge on and I would also use becuase of the extent of the top damage, use screws on the wings (I really dont like these), which can be covered with rosewood plugs.

The problem is its been stuffed up a few times by others that dont know what they are doing, so you have to make the best of what you can with to make it functional again

If it's me I'm going to replace the bridge plate/flatten the top and then use my router inlay set to make the the inlay and cut out the perfect shape to fill. I use this set:

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/09I16/ ... tads-plaid^40216024940-sku^09I16@ADL4WC-adType^PLA-device^c-adid^65586553582

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"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

This is generally a job for careful hand work, avoiding routing a "hard" edge at the back margin of the bridge. A ramped transition between new and old wood is far less likely to separate than what amounts to the butt joint of end grain produced by routing through the top.

Here's a photo essay on that repair:

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier ... 28top.html

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

FRETS.COM
HomeShopTech
FRETS.NET

A hard edge is something more challenging.

You need to make a large bridge plate to redistribute the load

Thanks for the tips. Frank, your tutorial is just what I was looking for. In this case, as much as I'd love to use HHG I may have to go with epoxy all the way because there is already so much mystery glue under the bridge.

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It will probably be alright.