The Bridge for Julia's Guitar-Making a Copy of a 1933 Santos Hernandez Guitar

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At first sight, the Bridge appears to be a complicated and difficult thing to make, but you will discover that it is quite simple when you begin to follow the sequence of operations. Once again, it is a matter of care and patience as in all the other aspects of guitar construction.

Stanley Doubtfire, Make Your Own Classical Guitar, 1981




I finished carving the wings on the bridge today and glued on the mother-of-pearl overlay on the chordal block. I also found out how hard mother-of-pearl is, it will quickly dull a plane, knife or card scraper edge and wears out sand paper pretty fast.

I sanded the bridge using some 220 grit, then 400 grit and followed that by burnished the whole thing with an old dish towel.

It has a wash coat of shellac on it, now you can see how pretty this piece of Indian rosewood is.

Comments

  1. Tico VogtMay 20, 2013 at 4:15 PM

    Great work, Wilson. When the time comes to be able to produce a recording of the guitar, my ears will be ready!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wilson BurnhamMay 20, 2013 at 5:48 PM

    Thanks for the kind words, Tico!

    I hope to post a video of Julia playing her give after I hand it off to her. Stay tuned!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joe HMay 21, 2013 at 1:29 PM

    I've recently started to learn classical guitar(lefty, self teaching) & have found these guitar building blogs very interesting.(reading by way of smartphone) Thank you for posting these great articles.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wilson BurnhamMay 21, 2013 at 8:28 PM

    Your welcome, Joseph!

    I'm glad when anyone starts to learn the classic guitar, it's a wonderful world and the repertoire is endless!

    Check out Rob Reid's website at http://classicalguitartraining.com/

    ReplyDelete

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