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Submitted for your approval, One man. One bridge blank. the goal? To make a pinless bridge. Will he succeed? Only time will tell.
You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!
Also a dimension of bridges that are not constrained by pins. And the next stop is really the next sentence in this post, but the dramatic intro was kind of fun.
Anyway, here is how I made a pinless bridge. I don't have much in the way of power tools. Just a cheap, little drill press and a drum sander. I used both for this bridge, but it can be done without the drum sander. Not sure about the drill press though. It seems like it would be tough to drill perfectly perpendicular holes without it, but it could probably be done.
This is not the only way to do this, just the way I did it.

First I cut the bridge blank to size. I used standard Martin belly bridge dimensions which I procured from the Stew Mac web site.


Then I marked the center of the bridge and the locations of the two E strings. I am using 2.25" spacing on this guitar. Once I had those measurements established, I used my string spacing ruler to lay out the locations of the remaining strings. I don't think it would make any difference if I simply made each string equally spaced but I have the ruler, so why not use it?


I then used my drill press to drill the holes for the strings through the back edge of the bridge. Be sure to note the extensive clamping I used to avoid the bridge moving around during drilling. Oh...there are no clamps in this pic? Well I used my right hand during the actual drilling. That is sort of clamp like, no? This pic is staged. I used a 5/64" bit for these holes. I determined this was a good size by guessing. Or by drilling a hole in scrap. I'm not telling which it was.


After drilling the holes, I used a 7/32" bit to countersink the holes. I put tape on the drill bit to keep it from going too deep. I tried to make the countersinks deep enough to almost completely cover the ball ends. I didn't want to go too deep and risk compromising the strength of the back of the bridge. Though in hind site, it would probably not have made much difference if the counter sink were deeper.


I wanted to have about .25" of wood from the back of the bridge to the beginning of the slot where the strings start to go up to the saddle. It seemed to me that the saddle would raise the strings up sufficiently that I need not worry about the angle of the ramp in the string slot area. I used the set up in the next pic to slot the bridge and also to cut the slot for the string access.


I wound up with the mess below after cutting the two slots. Once the slot in the back of the bridge was cut, I used a chisel and a dremel with various attachments to cut the ramp.


The curved lines are where I would shape the wings. I used a very precise method for establishing the curves, namely a roll of blue painters tape because the radius was the right size out of all the things laying on my bench at the time.
True story.

I wasn't worried that the slot in the back of the bridge was sloppy. I was going to hack away at it with various sharp and pointy things anyway. After a bunch of sanding, chiseling and a quick wipe with Danish Oil, here is what the bridge looks like:


There you have it. I pretty much made this up as I went along. I had three bridge blanks to work with if I messed up the first, but it all worked out. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted the finished product look like and I figured out as I went along how to get there.
If I missed anything that might need filling in, I will do my best to explain but these are all the pics I took of the process. Well...except for this one:

but it shows less detail than this one:

so I went with #2.
Thanks for looking!

Tony

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Thanks Tony I appreciate the short and scary ride through your mind !

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Tony
Nice one. I noticed on the finished guitar pics you carved a radius on the wings want to show any of that?

You crazy sum of a bench. No one in there right mind uses a pinless bridge!

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You guys are all crazy.
I would love to show how I carved the bridge, but I didnt take any pics of that. I might have some pics of shaping a different bridge, but I'm not sure.
I used a Wagner Saf-T-Plane to cut some of the wood off, then a rasp, files and sandpaper to smooth out the sections. I wish I had some pics, but I do not.

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Thanks for the walk through Tony, the bridge looks really good! Did you hollow out behind the saddle to lower the bridge weight, or for design reasons? I can definitely see you with pointy ears on the bridge of the Enterprise. Also, your right foot is a bit out of focus in the last pic.

Alex

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I hollowed out that section because I had no reliable way to drill the string holes on an angle to go up to the saddle. That was my way of getting a path from the bottom where the string enter to the saddle. It also removed weight from the bridge. This one is 37 grams I think. I don't know how heavy it would have been without the hollow section. Heavier I would guess!

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Looks like a lot of horizontal stress on a sliver of wood.....but not a bad idea.

Consideration: Maybe use a brad point first to countersink to make a flat bottom.... Then drill your holes thru. Find some small, thin brass washers at your hardware store to set in the holes so the ball ends don't end up chewing up the interior of your holes AND would help creating uniform stress on the surface area of the hole. . If you want to set a domed or cone shaped washer in your existing (not flat) bottom holes you can use a large punch on a block of wood to create a cone shaped washer...or a small ball bearing and hammer on a wood block. Probably need to glue those washers in with a dab of CA to keep them in there.

Just a thought.

Kent

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Thanks for the input Bailey but this method of making a pinless bridge has been around longer than I have and the example that are 40-50 years old seem to be ok. Besides, all those extra steps would mean I need to plan things out before I grab a blank and start hacking away at it! "grab and go" seems to work well for me. It's how I work best I think.

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What about using Telecaster string ferrules?

A lot of pinless bridge I have seen have a bolt through the soundboard, is this necessary with pinless bridges?

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No bolt needed according to Johnny Lowden, who was nice enough to answer a few questions for me. I also glued it on with Titebond original.

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Hey Tony,
Here is a jig you might like if you think you would be interest in drilling those string holes at an angle:

http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=29194

I drill mine at about 14 degrees.

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Chris,
Thanks for that link! I had never seen your tutorial before and now you have me thinking. The jig for drilling the holes at an angle is genius! I will definitely have to give that a try if I make another pinless bridge. One thing I dislike about them is that doing the set up is a real pain. Particularly intonating the saddle since you can't simply slack the string, pop out the pin and move the string out of the way. I like how you use different sized holes for each string path through the bridge as well.
Great info. Much better than my lousy toot! Thanks!!

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