Acoustic Guitar Construction

been schooling up on you tube bridge removal videos. The Titebond was new and always stored in the house, my garage is sitting at about 110 right now. I'll get a brand new bottle of glue and undertake this project on the dining room table. I'll post some pics. Thanks for the moral support, things generaly go wrong when you don't have confidence in what you are attempting to do.

Well the bridge has successfully been removed revealing some interesting findings. The bridge came off very clean with NO splintering due to the fact that NONE of the glue had adhered to the spruce top. This got me thinking, I had cleaned the ebony bridge with acetone but had done nothing to the bridge area of the top so I was wondering if a layer of adhesive had been left on the surface when I removed the mask after the finishing was complete. The other thing is the the bridge area was as smooth as a babies butt, a sign of my hard work in preping for the lacquer finish but not the best gluing surface. I have cleaned the area with naptha then went over it with some very coarse sand paper. I will continue tomorrow by re contouring the bridge to the top and preping things for the re glue. I'll let you know how it goes.

That sure came off clean! I would be very happy. It would seem to me that the glue had adhered to the spruce top or the bridge would have popped off long ago. I would wonder if that edge of the wing that lifted was sitting on the finish edge left by the tape. It may have been as simple as that the edge was not clamped tight.

Good point John -- always sand a tiny bevel around the bridge perimeter to assure clearance from the coating layer.

It was attached to some degree but it was minimal, there was not so much as a trace of glue on the spruce, ALL of it was on the ebony. I did have a bevel on the underside of the bridge to insure clearing the finish. I was happy that it did come of so easily, I am re sanding the back of the bridge tonight so hopefully I can get it re glued tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes and thanks for the input.

OK, re contoured the bridge using this sand paper I picked up at Lowe's, it has some sort of non slip coating on the back that worked great, the sand paper stayed right in place on the top while I stroked the bridge back and forth to get the contour. Gluing went as planned with good clean results, fresh glue, joints all cleaned up, I think we may have it fixed. I let the glue set for 2 days and strung it up yesterday, nothing has flown off yet so I think we got it!! The last pic is of it strung up along with my number 2 in progress. Thanks for the support during this repair, Tim

Well Tim,
In the last ten years I experienced this twice. And I found that the glue did not grabbed the top all over. My consideration is that it took too long before I attached the bridge to the top. A part of the glue must have been already gelled. What I do now, is putting little glue on both sides of the joint before clamping. Since then there were now failures. That FWIW.
Herman