Designing the Bridge

Last month I spent an evening with some paper and a set of french curves, sketching out a design for the bridge. I wanted something that was a little unique but not too wild, something that would personalize the guitar.

Once I had an outline that looked nice to me, I added the saddle slot, a center line, and the position of the pin holes. I cut out the bridge design and glued it to a piece of 1/4 inch MDF. I cut the MDF down to size and sanded the edges down to the line. The result is a template that I can reuse on future guitars.

I got a nice piece of African ebony from Acoustic Woods Ltd. in British Columbia. I flattened it and brought the thickness down to ~3/8 inch thick using a plane. One thing to note about ebony, the dust goes everywhere and turns everything black.

I traced the outline of the bridge onto the blank and cut it out with a coping saw.









After sanding down to the outline I shaped the back to match the radius of the top.



The next step was drilling pilot holes for the pins and cutting the saddle slot. I use a 1/8 inch straight router bit in my drill press. A sliding vise makes the process easy and accurate.


With the basic shape complete, I switched to my Luthiers Friend to scoop out the "wings". From there I switch to a scraper and 80 grit sandpaper to get to the final shape. I continue sanding with finer grits until I reach 1200. At that point the ebony has almost a glassy shine. The other bridge in the picture is for guitar #3, and is made of Honduran rosewood.