Bridge Removal - Missing Spruce Under the Bridge

[Philip Secrist]

I removed a bridge that was coming up on an old Gibson SJ. The bridge came off very cleanly with few spruce fibers being pulled up, but the bridge must have been removed and re-glued at least once before because after getting the bridge I found several missing pieces of spruce (about 1/4" wide  x .1/2"' long 0.030" deep) on the glue surface (see pics).  Is there enough gluing surface left here to just clean up the bridge and top surfaces and then glue the bridge back on?  Or should I repair the missing pieces?  What is the recommended method for doing this, if this the right approach?

[Greg Mirken]

That's enough missing wood that I'd recommend inlaying spruce before regluing the bridge. You can use a Dremel router base to level the bottom of the recesses.

[Glen H]

I agree, at least on the areas at the tail-end of the bridge.

[nathan clark]

I too would patch that. I would extend the patchs beyond the pin holes. In other words, if your patches stop at the pin holes, the top will not be strong enough and your repair could fail. There was a discussion of different methods for patching a top in a previous thread:

http://fretsnet.ning.com/forum/topics/regluing-a-bridge

[John]

Here's a repair where I glued back everything that came out, that meant carefully cutting off the parts that were stuck to the bottom of the bridge and putting them back. I glued up all the pieces at once using a heavy bridge shaped caul. I used a chisel and sand paper to flatten the area out and reglued the bridge.

http://fretsnet.ning.com/forum/topics/looked-like-a-write-off