Bridge Over Troubled Water
My friend came to visit, and Ervin was kind enough to let me have that time off. We did a little road trip, visiting Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, and then over to the coast to spend some time at the beach.
Half Dome, Yosemite.
Sequoia tree.
Carmel beach.
It was nice to get a bit of time away from the shop, and see some of the amazing things California has to offer.
On returning from the trip, it was straight back into work. I was up to the final sanding stage of my build. Before sanding the top, I wanted to locate the bridge, but in order to do that I needed a bridge design. This task had been on my mind for a while. I wanted to do something in the Somogyi carved style, but every time I tried to draw some lines for the carving, it ended up looking very similar to what Ervin or another former Somogyi apprentice had already done. It seemed so hard to come up with something a little bit different. I talked to Chris Morimoto about this, and he assured me that everything had not already been done. Chris suggested taking a different approach to the design, to break out of the rut I was in. Rather than drawing on paper as I had been doing, he suggested that I make a prototype bridge and play around with that. He also suggested borrowing some lines from the headstock, to tie the elements together. I listened to Chris’s suggestions, and managed to come up with a design that I like.
Mahogany for the prototype bridge.
Drawing some lines to figure out how I’m going to carve it.
Carving to see what it will look like. I like the yin/yang effect that is going on with the shadows. The curves on the wings are borrowed from the tip of the headstock, and there is a sense of rotational movement that echos the rosette.
Now that I’ve got a bridge design, I can go ahead and make the bridge.
Routing the saddle slot.
I clamped the bridge in the correct place, and drilled two holes through the bridge and the top. This will make it easy when it comes time to align it for glueing. I haven’t carved the bridge yet, I’ll save that for later.
After locating the bridge, I was able to sand the top. I’m enjoying seeing the guitar in a cleaned up state.