| I started by planing down the mahogany for the body. One centre strip for the neck with two pieces glued either side for the body. |
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| I glues the side on one at a time to make
life easier - things get a bit slippery when the glue goes on. It can be difficult to clamp the cut away areas so keep the off cuts to give the clamps something to hold. |
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| With the glue dry (I'm using five minute poly) I put it through the planer to level things out. Time to start working out the shape and making templates. |
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| I jointed the bookmatched maple for the top
using a handplane and then glued them together. I had to work around an unsightly knot in the maple, but it should look stunning!
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| I removed the majority of the waste on the band saw. I will be hollowing out some of the body before I glue on the maple cap to lighten the guitar and also give it more of an acoustic character to the sound. |
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| With the top dry I roughly trimmed it to size. |
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| Then it was time to start hollowing out the body. I used a 30mm forstner bit to do the hogging. |
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| Checking I don't go too deep I removed material from areas away from the pickups, bridge, etc., cleaning up with a chisel. The area where the controls will be sited I will remove from the rear, so left this for now. |
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| To ensure the maple staying exactly in place during glue-up I drilled two holes through for dowels. These are placed in the pick-up cavities, so will be removed later. |
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| Then its into the vacuum bag to glue the top on. |
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| An hour later and its ready! Now to start laying out the final
shape. Look at that maple! It is going to be awesome once the finish goes on! |
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| After trimming the body to final shape I cleaned up the edges on the disc and spindle sander. Then a roundover bit in the router softened the back edges. |
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| Looking good - I laid out the nut, bridge and headstock. |
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| After roughing out the headstock shape on the bandsaw I then trimmed it down to size and curved it into the neck. |
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