Planing the top

Well the glue has now dried and now it needs planing flat.

 

After flattening I trimmed the excess edges marked out the body outline and cut the 'f' holes.  Now it's flat it's definitely too thin to do a carved top, so a simple flat drop it is!

Tried the band saw again and it cut through the beech wood like a knife through butter.  I did need to make some relief cuts on the tighter curves.

And with some lighter fluid to highlight the grain, I think this is going to look very nice!

Going on a diet

So another day off work with good weather so more guitar butchery...

Not sure why yet but my bench pedestal drill wouldn't work so I used my hand drill with a smaller wood bit in it to hog out as much wood as possible to reduce the workload of the router.

Mmm like a big lump of wooden emantal cheese...

Well that's dropped the weight by a pound!  You can also see where I started attacking the drill holes with a chisel.  This is to give me space to easily plunge my router bit in to the cavity without having to cut down first.

I love the figuring on the lower bout.

Halfway there...

All the way there with only one slight hiccup. I must have hit an exceptionally hard bit of wood with the router as it made a loud cracking noise, I jumped and took the corner off the centre block and when I checked I found a piece of tear out on the bottom. Thankfully it didn't tear out all the way through!

Then, using a chisel because I don't have bearing loaded router bit narrow enough, I connected the p'up selector switch chamber to main chamber where the inside of the rib cage contour is.

There, at nearly half the starting weight this is no longer the heveecaster! Rings nice, bright and lightly airy when tapped too.

You can also see where my hand drilling wasn't quite as straight as I thought.

I jointed the edges of the beech top too.

And glued....

Cutting the basic body shape

So, I was really excited to use the band saw I got off my wife's grandad...

Safety first, dust mask, ear plugs and safety glasses (not worn in the pic).

Well the band saw whilst great cutting through MDF couldn't cut through the oak, despite being a brand new blade. The wood kept grabbing and stalling the motor so I ended up resorting to using my jig saw and it took over an hour of gently nibbling along.

Even then every now and again the blade (also brand new) would get stuck followed by billowing smoke and sooty saw dust coming from the body blank and left lovely charred marks in the wood when I'd finished.

 

Some parts, usually when cutting across the grain, cut quite easily.

The bench belt/disk sander however did a fantastic job of reducing the blank to shape.  I screwed the routing template on due to it getting very dusty and not being able to easily see the pencil out line.  The tighter curves which are too tight for the sander were done by hand with rasps and files.

Obligatory dog photo...

 Well trimming it down has reduced the weight by a couple of pounds!