Official Luthiers Forum!

Removed a bridge to make a repair and while it came of pretty
clean there are a couple of divots. Wondering if I should fill
with glue and wood dust or simply ignore and let the glue fill
the void? They will be well hidden when I install the new
bridge and I was planning to fill just using off the shelf wood
filler but started wondering about potential problems with good
glue bond afterward.

Any comments are appreciated as always

Rich, I would fill them in with wood dust and glue (like titebond) and sand flush, that way you'll have a nice bondable surface for the bridge!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

    I don't like this method as you will have too much glue area trying to glue to a glued area. Glue won't stick well to glue.
     If I have a bad area I will scrape this and set in a small sliver of spuce and creat a shim so I have a wood to wood surface for glueing.
     I had a bridge fail once using the sawdust and glue filler. I don't want to go there again. The time to make the repair is not that much longer and you can glue the bridge on as soon as you get the shim leveled.
john hall

I think I would leave it. Titebond, even mixed with saw dust, is a poor gap filler, much to elastic. If you are really worried about it use some 5 minute epoxy to fill. Me, if the divets were small, I would just leave them and put the bridge back on.

Shane

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Canada

Hi Rich...Happy New year!!!
Well, this problem sounds really similar with my second guitar. I somehow set the bridge incorectly and had to remove it. Needless to say when I removed the bridge I took a substantial portion of the spruce with it. I smoothed it out by hand sanding and of course the divot was really large. Here's what I did...
I used just Titebond without dust. I applied a liberal amount of glue, reset the bridge corectly and clamped it down for a couple of days.
The bridge was set properly and plays beautifully and is still holding true.
I had no choice in using it as my garage guitar. Funny I don't have a garage!! But it does play well but doesn't look so hot because while removing the bridge I made a few deep scratches on the surface of the sound board.

Good Luck Buddy!!

    Never use Epoxy on a guitar, If you are ever going to have to do a repair you will find that this will just about destroy it. The truss rod is one exception. That is the only thing that should see epoxy.
     A proper joint takes some work. Walters method will work but what I don't like about it is down the road if you or some poor luthier has to deal with that in the future it can be a real pain.
     Lets look at this in 2 ways .
1 A keeper guitar
2 A junker
   Junkers , well do what you have to so yuo can play it.
   A keeper should be done with correct technique. If you take short cuts now you will never learn how to do the difficult repairs . I stopped doing the short cuts once I started working on these things. The poor techniques make repairs difficult and just about impossible to hide.
   John Hall

I ended up taking your approach John and glued some slivers into the divots and then leveled. Had a couple that were so very minor I will let the glue fill them during the bridge gluing process.

Thanks to all for your responses. Was intersting to see the varied approaches, all of which would work I am sure.

John is right. Fill divots under the bridge with solid wood; same as the top
wood.Howard Klepper38719.8725

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.