Cracked Bridges - Continued

[Jan Otto]

Dear List --

Update on Cracked Bass Bridge in a 1938 W. W. Kimball console ...

First of all, many thanks to all of you who made suggestions and offered
insights when this problem was first posted about 6 weeks ago.  Those of
you who said the problem might have been a failed glue joint were
absolutely correct.  The wood on each side of the crack had warped
enough to disfigure the bridge.  Furthermore, there were additional
cracks in the wood along the rows of blown out bridge pins.  We decided
to go for broke and replace the entire bridge.

Now we're having a nasty time getting the old bridge out.  We got the
soundboard button screws out OK and we were hoping it would have been an
easy matter to knock off the bridge/apron assembly from there.  It won't
budge.  We would like to get it off in as much of a single piece as
possible so that we may send it off to be duplicated (neither one of us
has the shop capabilities to do the duplication job ourselves).  Does
anyone have any great ideas on how to blast this thing off without
blowing a big hole in the soundboard?

Please note:  We have driven wedges between the backposts and the
soundboard/ribs for support.  We have also taken a pattern on a sheet of
mylar.  And, we have measured the bridge height from the soundboard and
from the apron.  Anything else we should do before we really make a mess
of all of this?

Thank you in advance --

ZR! RPT and Jano
diskladame@provide.net and jano@provide.net