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What grain orientation do you use for your bridge plate. I've heard pro and con for both quarter and flat sawn grain on bridge plate. Does it matter?

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Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.

Yes it matters. Rift sawn for me, but flat sawn will be preferable to quartered.

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

This is a timely subject as I am about to cut some bridge plates.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

I like rift sawn for bridge plates.

Chuck

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I use 1/4 sawn alot, but I turn them so the grain lines don't line up with the bridge pins.
My reason? The same reason we prefer 1/4 sawn wood most other places. When I use Maple I use flat sawn.

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

What Laurent said and I'll add that I try to position the plate so that once cut, shaped my bridge pins will not be going through the same grain line as much as can be avoided.

Quarter sawn gives you the highest cross grain stiffness and lowest cross grain shrinkage. Neither of these is all that important in a bridge plate, IMO.

Flat cut tends to have high cross grain shrinkage, and low resistance to splitting. Shrinkage is not a problem, but splitting certainly can be.

Rift sawn, with the ring lines at 45 degrees to the surface, gives the most splitting resistance, the greatest cross grain flexibilty, and also the highest shear modulus. I don't know if the shear modulus helps, but it's an interesting tidbit.

I like to use rift sawn wood in bridges for the same reason.

Rift-to-quarter, two layers each angled about 15º off square (to the centerline) in opposite directions. Outer layer angled opposite of the pin line.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Thought I would post some pics of what I was considering on using. They are pieces of 2x10 hard rock maple bench seats I recycled from a gym at work. Which one would you use? The tight grain or the wide grain. I just read this morning the wide grained hardwood in stronger.

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Mark Ewing
Columbus Ohio
"Trees are an important and precious thing. We should build good things with them. Building good guitars with heart are the best use for them." K. Yairi.

I use pinless bridges, so I like quartered for the reasons that Alan pointed out. But if I were using pins, I would go rift to flat.

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