I posted this to The Gear Page, but will post it here as well, in case anyone has any ideas.
One of the items I rescued from a flooded music store a few years ago was was an Applause acoustic guitar. It has a plastic bowl back like an Ovation and what appears to be an aluminum neck and plastic headstock. AFAIK it was submerged in river water for at least 2 days, The only apparent damage was that the bridge was pulled up a little. This guitar became my leave-it-lying-around-the-house acoustic because it's pretty indestructable. I covered the Applause logo with a variation of the old pre-war C. F. Martin logo. Mine says C. M. Fartin.
Last night I was tuning it and the bridge started to pull off the guitar. I realized that there are two screws through the bridge and top, helping to hold the bridge on. When the bridge came up it actually tore the top up where the screws went through. Because of this, I think the parts that were glued actually pulled (ripped) the top up rather than separating from the top.
I would like to repair the guitar if I can do it reasonably easily. There's not much point putting a lot of money into it, since it's not worth much and will only continue to be the guitar I leave out because I'm not worried about it.
I would think I could completely remove the bridge, find a way to patch the hole where the top has been torn up, put a trapeze tailpiece on and an archtop-type bridge that sits on the top and is held in place by the strings. I seem to recall that Vintaxe Forum's Michael Ambrose was using these bridges on flat-top guitars, but had to modify them pretty heavily to sit on a flat top (Michael?).
Does that make sense? Any other ideas? I'm not too concerned about preserving looks, tone or volume.
I'll try to post pictures in a day or two.
-Scott