Cavaquinho bridge

It was time to make the bridge for the cavaquinho. Among the fretboard blanks I made from my mesquite log was the scrap piece that is inevitably left over after flipping a quarter log left and right on the bandsaw. It wasn’t even or smooth in any way so it was in for some planing action. 

First I cut a bit off with an old backsaw. 

Then I established a reference surface. In the pic is my no.3 plane but the no.5 was also used. 



Because I was lazy I chose to cut the saddle slot by hand instead of on the mini table saw. I made the groove with different saws but started by scoring with a marking knife and then deepening the slot with chisels. 



The angle was a bit of a guesstimate and I hope it’ll work. Then I made the chamfers and brought it to final thickness / height. 



The transition to the wings were carved by hand with a chisel that was almost wide enough. 



The underside is arched to match the soundboard, made so by rubbing the bridge on a concave sanding block. (The chisel in the pic is really wide but wasn’t sharp enough for carving the wings.)



Laying out with tape, ruler and pencil. Just like always. 



And clamping it in place. What I failed to show you was inserting the piezo pickup strip in the saddle slot, and pulling the cable down through a hole in the soundboard. The jack is in the endpin. 



And here the jack goes in. A miniature tele plug connects it to the piezo. I put some shellac around the hole because it’ll be there when I finish the instrument.