(Left) Here is a Martin 000-17 that met a sister swinging a doorknob. Notice the multiple splinters...Ouch!

(Right) After carefully re bending some of these lower shards that had "relaxed," the restoration is maybe 85% complete.

(Left) All the shards and splinters aligned nicely, unseen are two new side braces installed via the previously pictured clamp.

(Right) After some burn-in work, a bit of leveling and shooting a few coats of lacquer , the repair is almost impossible to detect.

On this Martin MC-28, we needed to reglue the bridge. The loss of topwood was idealy minimal.

I dry clamp the same original bridge with simple padded clamping cauls, after prepairing and fitting the gluing surfaces. Notice the finish around the bridge is just like new.

Here is a sequence of pictures documenting the replacement of an ebony bridge on a  1974 Martin D-28. 

The owner acquired the guitar after someone reset the neck.  Unfortunately, the angle of the reset was cut too steep.  The excessive neck angle resulted in having a saddle that’s too tall, which in this case distorted the sound, caused the saddle to lean and be pressed forward (sometimes encouraging a cracked bridge).  As the saddle leaning forward caused the guitar to play “out of tune”, the intonation further suffered by having the heel of the neck trimmed improperly, (during the prior reset attempt) shortening the scale length of the neck! That’s a big no-no!

My task was to repair the bridgeplate (interior) and remove the securely glued original (shaved) bridge, without damaging the lacquer finish.  After preparing the body of this vintage martin for the new bridge, I hand carved a slightly thicker custom ebony bridge while relocating the saddle and bridgepins.  This is all done without expanding the original outline of the old bridge, optimally preserving the conspicuousness of the repair.  Check out the pics : )