Official Luthiers Forum!

stewmac used to make bolts that fit in the bridge pin holes that were hollow inside to allow a string to pass through for temporary bridge mounting. I bet you could adapt those to hold your lever and save yourself having to glue/uncle the bridge…

I was thinking the same. Colin, it’s these bolts - https://www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-a ... kage-of-4/

And yes, please do not uncle the bridge. That’s just weird.


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I'll try not too.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Thanks guys, these wre my first thought. I'd absolutely love to not have to glue the bridge on, only thing is the bridge couples with the X braces (overlap them) and as they are the main ""stiffener," of the soundboard,.resisting bridge rotation don't think I would get a realistic rotation reading without gluing it.
Can't see a way round it.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Why not try with the bolts and then measure what happens when the guitar is done? Even if the accuracy wasn’t one hundred percent there, if it was consistently off between bolted and glued it would still provide useable data without uncling your bridge…

That does suggest something to me.
Why don't I try it first with the bolts, then with the bridge glued, then uncle the bridge then finish the guitar and check rotation
That would give me more data .

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Exactly. If you find that bolts are always say x more rotation than glued, the bolted numbers can be a proper predictor…anyway, no harm in trying besides the cost of a couple of bolts…

Colin, did you ever get any traction on this idea? I started thinking about the same thing. I was also thinking that braced deflection should correlate in not too complex a fashion with bridge rotation. I am getting ready to start carving braces on my current build and I want to measure deflection, spectrogram, and if possible some semblance of rotation at stages along the way. If the latter is not possible it seems like at the very least the first two could be compared with final rotation. Like you I am not hoping to hit 2 degrees, but I would like some kind of red line while my build number is still in single digits.

Unfortunately not. I made my rig and got rims together with the braced top, bridge glued on and deflection tested, working on the bracing until 1.7 degrees rotation was indicated..
Repairs and a student build course intervened and I found recently that my inclinometer battery was in fact too low for good measurements, so it's back to scratch.
This next time I'll be trying some of the newer generation industrial heavy duty double sided tapes to make bridge removal relatively easier (using Naptha)

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I just used a DS tape I've been reading about:
XFasten Double Sided Woodworking Tape 1/2" x 36 Yards (4-Pack) - Double Face Woodworker Turner's Tape
Bought it on amazon. Loved that it held tight but was relatively easy to separate, and remove the tape with almost zero residue. This allowed me to use a generous amount of tape (routing radius on fingerboards). It was thick-ish but not thick like the old white woodturners tape. It said a four pack and it was; two 1/2" and two 1/4" rolls....

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NVLTYXB?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2

In the spirit of sharing, never use the 3M "LSE" tape for wood, unless you are NEVER going to take it apart. The LSE indicates "Low Surface Energy" and it's used on plastics and hard to adhere materials.... like UHMWPE. A friend had a whale of a very difficult time removing the adhesive from wood

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Best 2S tape I’ve found is at Dollar Tree in the craft section…super thin and if your luck holds it’ll just peel off when you want…