RobF -> RE: Density wood bridge (Nov. 10 2024 11:45:10)
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Hi and welcome to the Foro. My belief is your best chance at success when starting out is to follow tried and true patterns using standard materials. It's too early in the game to be seeking out alternate materials and worrying about technical details such as densities, velocities, and all the other stuff that's discussed in some books and on forums. Most of that is already covered and taken care of if standard patterns, dimensions, and materials are used. It falls out of it, not the other way around. It never hurts to observe the results and record your findings. See it as a long game. You appear to have a technical bent, so you've probably already started a journal of your building experiences. You can maintain multiple journals. Checklists, shop notes, and project details are all useful. I don't think it's necessary to maintain notes for every project, once experience is gained, but that depends on the character of the maker. There's no point in doing something if it's just a chore, after all. Some makers, Daniel Friederich being an example, kept notes for their entire career. In Friederich's case, quite copious notes. It would be beneficial to seek out interviews with him where he has explained his methodology in that respect. There's good ideas to be gained there. My personal feeling is the bulk of the benefit from record keeping is in the doing. The note taking, in itself, is beneficial as it forces one to elucidate their observations and experiences. Personally, I do refer back my notes to remind me of things because I have to. I make jigs and the like and then can't figure out how to use them later on, so in my case it's needed. But I'm convinced a lot of benefit just comes from being able to compose one's thoughts enough to write them down with some measure of clarity. The main thing I'm trying to say, so that I don't go on forever, is your best chance at success is to follow what has been successful for other makers before you and build upon that once more experience and knowledge is gained. Pick a successful plan, follow it using the materials suggested in the plan, and then learn from that. Which is what you're already doing, actually. I'm absolutely not suggesting that you ignore or stifle your thirst for knowledge, just that at the beginning the how's are perhaps more important than the why's. Questions about alternate woods like walnut and ebony are fine, they are not stupid questions, but honestly are a diversion at this point. You already know a rosewood bridge is the standard and you can get the dimensions for the bridge from your plan and that is the least painful path forward. Trust me on this, please don't waste your time trying to reinvent the wheel. Better to pay attention to the structure, itself. That's more important than a lot of the minutiae that people focus upon on these forums when starting out. Try to understand structure and then things like material properties, bracing patterns, and the like start to make more sense. For flamenco, keep it simple. I've gotten in trouble for saying stuff like this on here before, and I realize I don't always say things as well as I think I am when writing them down, so a lot of that's on me to learn how to communicate better. Still, it was really discouraging for me, and I don't want to be discouraging to you. I can only say it's the best advice I can muster. Don't shoot the messenger, a lot of this is just common sense but maybe it's not as obvious when starting out because the whole endeavour can seem a little overwhelming at first.
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