Bridge Cap Thickness

[Ron Overs]

>At 6:20 PM -0500 14/3/03, Farrell wrote:
>What are the guidelines on how thick a bridge cap should be? And 
>why. I've got a new vertically laminated long bridge that can be 
>trimmed down to any height, and I'm trying to figure out how thick 
>to make the cap. The cap will be horizontally laminated with about 
>1.6 mm laminations. Laminations will be epoxied together. The 
>installation should allow the cap to remain at near full thickness. 
>It's a bit of a pain making the laminated cap, and that process is 
>only complicated by increasing the number of laminations. I have 
>five laminations now and it adds up to about 8 mm thick. I would 
>like to not make it any thicker than optimal, or to the point of 
>diminishing returns.
>
>Terry Farrell

Terry,

8 mm of cap thickness will be more than adequate. The greatest stress 
on the bridge cap wood will be at very top surface of the cap, 
diminishing further down into the cap. We are currently building our 
caps 6 mm thick using 6 x 1mm thick laminations.

Good on you for getting stuck in at the deep end - all the best. What 
did you end up doing at the bridge dog legs? I read the posts you 
received. Did you steam and press the vertical laminates before the 
final glue-up? Wolfenden suggested this technique with regard to 
bending the rims also.

Ron O.
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