In the last time so may bad things happened so I thought I put a simple and positive post here

When I looked at the boring bridge of this wonderful guitar I thought I had to pull out my milling tools again and transform it into a kind of "custom" Elite bridge. This time I worked only 2-dimensional because the wood was not very thick.

The pics show the guitar before and after the treatment

I was about to sell the guitar but I decided to better keep it thus I wanted to make it "my" guitar and "destroyed" the collector´s status. When I saw the result I thought that I never should have sold my sunburst 1537...<sigh>

I like it!

U use a simple hand drilling machine:

I work free hand, use several dental drilling tools,( I have 100s of them) from fine to thick and after that I polish with a brush. It´s just a matter of patience and steady hands. With the 1538 it was very complicated because the wood was very fibrous, unlike the wood on the 82 collector ot the 1537 which was very much harder.

That´s why I did not work the carvings out completely. You can see the others on 2 of my albums on this site.

The armrest is a "John Pearse ebony slimline", on other Ovations I use handmade armrests by Ernie Rissmann, these are better because they sit on the side of the body and only slightly touch the guitar top, and are very lightweight.

For my 2008 collector I made with this tool small engravings in the armrest and filled them with gold paint so that it is nearly invisible:

Ernie´s armrest is really better but a little bigger. I´looking for a solution for my custom legend guitars, I want to add a kind of fake abalone trim on the armrests but have no idea yet how to do it.

But first I have to re-build this one, because the guitar recently fell down my workbench (I did not think about the contour bowl!) when I was changing strings and the armrest splintered into pieces....ok practise brings perfection;-)

You wanted to see some of my tools: