| |||||||||||
|
©1992 - 2008 Richie Dotson. All photographs, graphics and text owned by Richie Dotson. All rights reserved Website designed, written, photographed and maintained by Richie Dotson You are visitor Number:
|
Minimal tools are needed to build banjo bridges, and with a very small investment in materials (you can even use shop scrap) you can build banjo bridges of equal or greater quality of those available on the market without spending $20.00 or more a pop. God bless the poor banjo picker with a little time to experiment! Now, lets build those banjo bridges! Although it is difficult to see, the metal ruler is against a piece of quarter sawn maple. I like between 5 and 8 grain lines per bridge for a balanced sound. This means too few grain lines will produce a "mushy" or soft sounding bridge, and too many grain lines will produce a "raspy" or hard sounding bridge. There are no rules written in stone, however. This piece of maple
looks very good to me, so I'll get started. Remember that the side of the
wood you are looking at will be the side of the bridge. The grain lines
are very straight, too. I do believe that is important.
The next step I use is to begin on one side of the big lines that mark off the overall length of the bridge, and make cross marks on the long straight line (the 1/4" one) at the following measurements. 3/4", 1 3/16", 1 15/16", and 2 3/8". These cross marks on the line 1/4" up and parallel from the bottom will be the exact locations at which to drill holes with an 23/64" drill bit. This doesn't have to be this exact size bit as one that is close will do fine. Smaller by a fraction or two will put you closer to the size for a "grover" style bridge. |
