Any Merit?

[Herman]

A bag full of donut holes for Ken on the way!
My Ovation had a crack along the grain below the bridge.

[Ray Ussery]

Ray -- what's up with the those little deally thingies on the ends of the fan braces near the HUGE! bridge plate?

ken I have no clue...can't pull it up close enough to see well, not enough pix and I have no idea who built it... I had just never seen anything close to the design..
A wild guess is they are "Carved" ends of the brace the overlaps the bridge plate thickness...what? a so called attempt to prevent the bridge from tipping forward? I think that would be quite an over statement considering what little I know...to ME, just common sense would say it wouldn't have snowballs chance of actually doing that.
Probably just another "Marketing" feature of some sort. :>)

[Kevin in California]

My bridge plates are huge like that.
Ken, would those be cinnamon raised donut holes???

[ken cierp]

Plain old fry cakes will do.

Recognizing that the bridge plate is a brace of sorts, I still believe its improtant to minimize the overall weight of the sound board and its components. What is accomplished acoustically with a very large bridge patch? Yes some of the old Gibsons had plates that were too small causing failure around the pin holes but the standard Martins that match the bridge foot print stand up well over time.