Workshop: Sovereign Bridge Lift

Yesterday afternoon I'd just about finished up work on a 60s Harmony Sovereign and had just dialed in the setup when I noticed the back of the bridge lifting (see above).

Oh well! No sense leaving that... so I taped the location off and the thing came right off with a really sharp seam separator (the glue was just about shot).

This is the reason why these bridges tend to get lift: do you see how much area wasn't glued before and had finish under the bridge edges? I'm going to sand this out all the way to the edges of the actual bridge footprint and then glue the entire underside of the bridge surface and that should give it a much better grab.

This kind of smaller glue surface under bridges is really common to 60s guitars but it sure is idiotic... if this had been glued right in the first place I probably wouldn't have needed to reglue it.