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I am wondering if anyone uses anything other than rosewood or maple for bridge plates?

Honduran Rosewood or Osage Orange are my favorites.

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

Black locust, bloodwood.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Purple heart. Because I made a bunch of them a few years ago and have not run out yet.

Greg N

Bridge plates are overrated...... But if you must I just glued a Honduran Rosewood BP on a WRC OM top. I seem to be partial to either BRW or HRW for plates.

Persimmon

What do you think about this approach? I generally use an offcut of whatever my back set is, as long as it's not perfectly quartered. And I cut it so the holes aren't in a straight line with the grain. I've used Pau Ferro, Rosewood, (several species), Black Walnut, etc.. These are all hard enough, right? Maybe the walnut's a litttle sketchy in terms of hardness. I've even used dogwood -which is as hard as persimmon. I certainly wouldn't use Mahogany, but for the others, why not?

Me too but the last two have been Mahogany!
Like you say Im sure anything hard will be fine
I looked inside a friends Yamaha the other day and it was chewed up spruce!

It seems like the major things that matter with bridge plates are:
Not too splitty
Abrasion resistant
Not too heavy given the rest of your bracing scheme and bridge.
Cheap

I made one out of several plys of hard maple veneer... Works fine, but probably too much trouble in the future...

I have done 3 more out of Purple Heart pallet stringer material... It is very hard and abrasion resistant (And free!)...

I also used Hard maple for 1 and it seems fine too....

I wouldn't use Cherry, Walnut, Soft Maple, or Mahogany... or anything that seems mushy, really splitty, or particularly soft...

Thanks

John

I forgot to mention that i use skew-cut wood for bridge plates, as it's the least likely to split. I dn't see where you need stiffness in that direction in this application.

I've used, Walnut, Imbuia and Cherry to name a few.

I bought some pre bent side wood from an ebay seller who
sells rejects from Martin Co.. They are laminated rosewood.
I just have to unbend the sides & cut.

Spruce with a .07" hardwood ball end plate on Ladders and BRW, African blackwood, Cocobolo, on the rest.