MIMF

When bending , how you locate things is important. I don't register off the waist I use the neck block. I have bent over 4000 sets of wood , so I have developed a pretty repeatable process. I use a special ruler that fits into the waist slot and align the end to a given point. I only need to get thi...

Bending the waist first will not give you the best replication of the pattern. Do a dry run and you will see gaps form on the bouts . Also by doing the bouts first then the waist , you are allowing the heat to get to the cellular level. As you drive the waist cawl you can see the slats pull down on ...

Side bending is all about temp control. There are a number of ways to do this. Some woods like hot and dry , others wetter. Maple and Mahogany tend to be hotter and dryer. I have a tutorial on You tube that will show the process but here is the basic process I use. KEEP A LOG OF TEMPS AND WOODS the ...

I am a traditionalist and use dovetails. I think most people way over think this joint. It matters not , Bolt on , Dowel , Dovetail , they neck mating still has to be done to establish the neck angle between the neck heel and the sides of the guitar at the neck block. The one major advantage to a do...

actually the lower bout is 15 3/16

the angle of compensation is about 3 degrees. The .125 offset will get you pretty close. Then you can compensate the saddle . When setting a bridge the saddle is the point we use to locate. The compensation length for the working length of the string and the Compensation angle are used to get the in...

Once a brace is glued to a plate it becomes a hydrometer and is constant flux with Rh. It is always best to true the radius to match a disk if you have one

Shaving a bridge is not a very good thing to do , unless you have a heavy bridge. If the bridge is 3/8 high , shaving is just going to add to the problem down the road. String height off the top will transfer the energy of the string and the lower you go the less energy available. Best advice , if y...

router tables will work but the jig uses the flex in the wood. Look close at the stops on the jig. the spring on the radius relaxes and the arc is 28 foot. These jigs are actually common. There are 2 dowels that spring the blank, the screw toggle is set to the X joint. There is a screw that is the s...

that isn't a brace it is a hold down feather board to hold the braces to the top for sawing

You can't fear mistakes , in fact welcome them . Often you will learn more from a failure than you will from success. In your early building you are thinking that you may know more than you do , so when the unexpected happens . you learn from it. Most errors are minor and technique related. To be ho...

I stopped tapping and use the deflection test. I feel that it shows a better result to the actual strength and stiffness of the top. I feel that you can tap but you won't get real results as once the top is glued to the sides you change the frequency of the top. I get real numbers this way and I fee...

Once shaped we need to radius the top of the bridge . I do this on the belt sander but sanding blocks or any other method that works for you is acceptable. Just be safe. Once radiused I do the final shaping by hand and can slot and drill them as needed. It may take you a few try to dial in the proce...

Now that the blank has the wings defined , you will have to so some hand work. I place the pattern on the blank and will now shape the final part of the bridge belly. This is done by hand and one reason doing more than one at a time will help develop muscle memory for this task.

The stop allows me a precise adjustment to set the wing and initial bridge shape. Keeping the blank still flat , I am able to flip the bridge as I sand the wing shape and have things square.

Okay here is a blank with the wings, we have to refine them. Again another simple stop fixture made up using a pattern. I do rough the shape of the bridge now using the band saw. So you can see the progression of the wood being removed to make a bridge.

Once the stock is sized I want to make the wings. I will rough them on a band saw using an old bridge for a pattern , then I make a stop jig so I can sand them to the correct length. As you can see it is not a complicated fixture and it can be modified to work on a drill press with a drum sander. Th...

To make bridges for a guitar you have to start somewhere. As you will see I use my oscillating sander a good bit for this task as well as my belt sander. I start with a pattern that was a reject from Martin. This is my basic bridge . Here is the order of this process 1st stock material , It may be a...

The way I made this was to set 2 stops ( those are the dowels) Then I set up the clamping point with the toggle pad at the point of the X brace intersection. I then tweaked at this until I hit the curvature I was looking for , in this case 28 feet. I found this to be very repeatable. I use a Forrest...

I used to do a lot of finishing but farm most out. I found that a good selection of grits will make the task more efficient. I would gauge things but the amount that I cut through the "orange" peel. I used a 400 wet to get 1/3 the way through the rough surface then jump to 600 and used 800...