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
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