Penco Acoustic Bridge Repair

This Penco Acoustic had a bridge with a crack that ran from end to end, through the bridge pin holes. Normally if glued back together and glued to guitar it will not hold due to string tension pushing forward on the crack.

The owner wanted to keep the guitar, it had played well in the past and wished to keep it in good playing condition. It was near impossible to find a new bridge that looked like the original.



I had an idea to put a thin three ply veneer under the bridge with the grain running in the opposite direction of the bridge. Grain going in the same direction as the strings is less likely to crack under tension.

This picture shows the plywood on the underside of the bridge. The bridge was glued and clamped to the plywood overnight. You can see the vertical grain of the plywood. I then dyed the plywood to match the bridge color.





The sides blended in very well, very difficult to see a separate piece of wood.


                                                                                                                                   The finished product was very handsome.

Time to glue the bridge on to the guitar. The fancy bridge curls required fancy templates for good clamping pressure to glue the edges down. This is an after glued shot, you can see the glue in the bridge pin holes.

Block clamped on top of bridge to distribute the pressure across the bridge.

All the squeezed out glue should be cleaned up, less clean up later. Hardened glue takes a long time to clean up with a wet rag.

When completed it looked wonderful, the customer was very happy. I even guaranteed it for two years against coming apart. So far, (knock on wood), all my glue jobs have held up, as I had expected, if it holds up for 6 months it will hold till the glue crumbles up from age, 40 years? Who knows, depends upon how it was cared for........I feel as if it will be fine for the life of the guitar. (Happy face!)

The guitar had nice comfortable action and played very well, tuned nicely too! Happy customer!