Decapping the bridge

[John Delacour]

At 16:01 -0500 3/8/08, Will Truitt wrote:

>...I used the thin knife to get it started, worked it along, added 
>thicker wedges a little further out to add stress to the joint as I 
>worked the alcohol in (you can hear the kk, kk, kk, as the glue lets 
>go.)

That's a great sound, isn't it!  Far better than the noise alcohol 
produces for most people!

>  As I got further along, I was then taking a rubber mallot and 
>gently working my way up in force of impact as I tapped down on the 
>bridge top on the side that was lifted away.  This helped to further 
>break the glue joint.  I was surprised how cleanly I got the bridge 
>off, even with the soft spruce of the panel.  Very little tearout. 
>Since we are talking about breaking a maple to maple glue joint in 
>this thread, I am going to surmise that this added touch with the 
>mallet would perhaps work very well.

In my experience of breaking all sorts of things apart this way, I 
have learned that patience and the alcohol and gentle but adequate 
pressure are the key.  It is all too easy, if you try to work too 
fast, to get a split going in the wood, and then you lose all your 
purchase.  It happened to me today when removing the cheek from the 
key bottom, because I had overlooked the fact that there were dowels 
there too and I needed to give the spirit time to loosen them so that 
I could get the saw in to cut them through.  Instead of waiting for 
your kk kk kk I gave it a hard tap, and the cheek began to split.  In 
this case it didn't matter, but I cursed my impatience all the same.


>Let me add another question - are you lads and lassies plugging the old
>bridge pin holes left in the root, or leaving them?  Particularly where you
>are leaving so much of the root, that would seem to be an important question
>here.

I plug them with little beech plugs that I got from a supplier long 
ago.  They are about 1/8" square in section and pointed like the 
bottom of a fence post.  I dip the point in glue and hammer them in, 
trimming them flush when the glue has dried.

JD