Official Luthiers Forum!

Would Birds eye maple be a good selection of species to use for a bridge on an acoustic?

If you could tell which way the grain was running on the wood, which orientation of the grain would be best suitable for placement on the soundboard?

Thanks,

Steve

Like Ebony it will make a dense bridge. Workable but the weight is on the higher end. On any bridge material you want the blank to be skew or riff cut to help prevent a possible split along the grain caused by the loading and rotational forces on the saddle but with maple this is probably not as likely as with most other hardwoods. Maple will be a tool duller for you so keep your tools sharp. You always want the direction of the grain of any bridge to be perpendicular to that of the top.

Steve, as you probably already know if you want to see any 'eyes' the bridge will need to be flatsawn, or as close to flatsawn as possible.

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Hibdon Hardwood, Inc.
http://www.hibdonhardwood.com
1410 N. Broadway
Saint Louis, Missouri 63102
314.621.7711

which will probably be Ok with Maple

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Here is the way I see it. You have four possible finish scenarios for a maple bridge.
1) Ebonize it with a dye to fake an ebony bridge. More than likely it will look like dyed maple.
2) Polish the wood and Leave it natural. Over time it will get dirty and cleaning it "will not" get it to look as good as new.
3) Use an oil finish that will add some added protection but it will suffer the same fate as the option #2
4) Use a poly or lacquer that will add far more protection but it too will look dirty over time and cleaning it will not be easy and may require refinishing.
Ebony and rosewood are a far better choice as they need just a little oil and buffing and you are done. Plus cleaning the bridge is extremely easy.

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Rich S

"The inconvenience of poor quality will linger long after the thrill of a bargain has been forgotten"

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Thanks for the responses.

Ironically Tony, I will be making a weissenborn replica.

I just wanted to match a birds eye maple fingerboard with a bridge of similar material more for looks. I never new the original weissenborns had maple bridges. I plan on leaving the maple in it's natural state until I finish the instrument with spray lacquer.

Thanks for your input Michael, i feel more confident in using maple now,thanks for sharing your thoughts on a maple bridge.

Steve

Steve,

Not birds-eye but I used maple for bridge and fingerboard on this double-necked acoustic lap slide. I finished both with Z-poxy then lacquer:

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Dave, that looks great. How wide did you make the fret markers? What did you cut the slots with? What did you fill the slots with?

What is Z-poxy? A pore filler?

Thanks, Steve

Zpoxy is actually designed as a finishing resin epoxy as in the final couple layers of resin applied to a fiberglass structure that gets sanded to dead smooth surface to give a finished near gel coat appearance. Yes it is most commonly used in lutherie as pore filler

Steve,

The "frets" are what I use on my standard rosette. It's two bwb purfling strips around a maple/ebony purfling (see photo) placed on edge. This is glued in a little proud and when scraped back the centre piece shows the maple/ebony pattern. I discovered this by accident and after lots of initial swearing decided I liked it. Depending on the bwb purfling I use the "sandwich" is either 4mm or 4.5mm thick and I use an appropriate router bit in a laminate trimmer and simple jig to cut the slots. I glued the "sandwich" in the slots using some pva (white) glue.

The fret markers are Brazilian Rosewood. I superglued a small piece to the bottom of a 5mm brad-point drill, put it in my drill press upside down and rigged up a sanding block that took it carefully down to the size of the drill bit. Then you carefully slice it off the drill bit and use the business end of the drill bit to make the hole in the fretboard. Time consuming but very satisfying,

The Z-poxy finishing resin is as Michael said.

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010