Carving the Maple Top

It was time to decide how I was going to carve the top of the guitar. Initially I was going to use a friends duplicarver. A duplicarver is a device that can replicate a carving easily. Unfortunately my friend has moved so I had to find another method. Some builders carve entirely by hand. I decided on a hybrid method using power and hand tools. I drew out the topographic lines on a piece of MDF that I routed to the exact shape of my guitar. I also mapped out the bridge, tailpiece, and pickups and made rough representations of them. The next step was to route the neck mortice in the mdf template. This was necessary because I didn't have a centerline to work with on the neck side of the guitar. By routing the mortice I gained access to the centerline. The template is used as a guide for the router. The next step was to use the bandsaw to cut around the outermost topographical line. I then affixed the template with double-stick tape. I decided to try and take a video of what I was doing. You will have to pardon me I haven't done this before and my presentation skills are less than stellar. I shot this with my digital camera so pardon the sound and my breathing hard. It turns out that the mic is located a little close to my mouth.


That's it. The carve went great. I even started sanding things down just to get a feel for the amount of work I have left. I also pulled out my finger plane and used it to start the carve on the horn. Here's a pic of the finished rough carve: And here is a pic of the horn after using my ringer plane on it for about ten minutes:

Wow, I'm glad that's over!

I'm happy with one exception. This carve brought out some weird grain/mineral (actually I don't know what it is) spots on the lower rear of the body. That's the weird brown blob you can see in the pics. The grain I don't mind so much but the mineral stuff is kind of black. I'm hoping it disappears as I sand in the recurve. If it doesn't that part will be under the darkest part of the burst so it shouldn't stand out too much.