Width of Violin Bridge

[Glenn P]

When calculating width of bridge feet  I measure from acoustic centre of the instrument to outside of bass bar, add 1.5 mm's, then double that for the width of the bridge feet. I sometimes (fairly often) come up with a width that is narrower than the standard bridge sizes. Is it a doable thing to carve the sides of the feet, or perhaps the whole bridge to achieve a bridge width with the exact bass bar extension of 1.5 mm's. I understand that this extension distance is quite important. Can anyone shed any light as to how they deal with this? Is it a matter of "coming close" with standard bridge widths? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much! gp

[Guido]

You get bridge blanks at all sorts of width for this purpose (similar to what's more common with cello bridges).

[Brad Dorsey]

9 hours ago, Glenn P said:

...acoustic centre of the instrument...

Is that different from the geometric center?

[Glenn P]

Thanks Brad and Guido. I always try to use Aubert Deluxe bridges and have never seen more than a couple of different widths being offered. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I will look a little harder. If you know of any sources for really good quality bridges with more sizes available Guido I would be very interested to hear.

What I meant by acoustic centre Brad was really the geometric centre I guess. I just read that you can't always take the centre joint as the actual centre. So I just measure between the inner purflings and divide by two and double check from each side. 

Thanks again guys!

[Davide Sora]

3 hours ago, Glenn P said:

I always try to use Aubert Deluxe bridges and have never seen more than a couple of different widths being offered. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I will look a little harder. If you know of any sources for really good quality bridges with more sizes available Guido I would be very interested to hear.

Despiau and Milo Stamm make bridges of all sizes. However, to make a 41 mm wide bridge I prefer to start from a 42 mm bridge and reduce it (I plane the sides with the blockplane, if you want you can see how I do in my videos), to keep the ankles more spaced apart

[Nick Allen]

8 minutes ago, Davide Sora said:

Despiau and Milo Stamm make bridges of all sizes. However, to make a 41 mm wide bridge I prefer to start from a 42 mm bridge and reduce it (I plane the sides with the blockplane, if you want you can see how I do in my videos), to keep the ankles more spaced apart

Yeah, you can get any which width in .5mm increments from most bridge manufacturers. 

Going .5mm over is good, and then trimming. The only thing that I don't like about that is that it leaves too little wood outside of the kidneys and it can look amateurish if you're not careful no matter how well it's carved. Making sure to taper the wood taken off is key here. 

[Will Turner]

Davide, very much appreciate your videos.   Besides the relaxing ASMR aspect, the information you provide is excellent!

Used it for my last bridge, a three tree Despiau.   The result is so much better than my previous bridges.

[Glenn P]

Thanks so much everyone! Have seen several of your videos Davide and they are terrific thank you! And thank you for your response. Will check out the one on bridges as you suggested. I like the idea of going .5 or 1mm over and reducing. Thanks for that Davide and Nick. Will try that for sure. I guess with what's been said, I don't even have to ask whether Despiau is comparable in quality to Aubert... not familiar with Milo Stamm. Will check them out.

This has been very helpful. Thanks again!