12/19/2004

It's been a while since I've done any work on the guitar and today I got a chance to try making a neck pocket template. This was my third attempt. The first two didn't turn out as accurate as I'd wanted. In this case, I used 1/2" ply wood. I started with a base piece, drew a center line down the middle and positioned my neck on it using pins made from wire brads. These held the neck in place on the center line.

The next step was to use more 1/2" ply stock as guides along each side of the neck. First I clamped them tight against the neck and then I drilled counter-sunk pilot holes and screwed the pieces down.

The next step was to remove the neck and rough cut the bulk of the material in the newly formed pocket. I did this at the bandsaw. This is done so the router bit only has to trim material away against the guides.

Now, it's off the router table that I set up with a 1/4" pattern bit. Here I cut the pocket running the bearing on the bit against the guides. After that, I removed the guides and fit the neck in. I'll need to cut a notch in the template for the heel-side truss spoke but that'll come later. The fit is excellent but I see I'll need to sand one of the 1/4" radius corners on the neck heel to get a perfect match. This plywood template will be my master for other templates.

12/26/2004

I realized that my template wasn't deep enough for the bit I was going to use so I screwed another 1/2" piece of ply to it and ran it over the flush-trim bit on the router table.

1/15/2005

I ordered the Wilkinson/Fender trem router templates from Stewart-MacDonald. They're really nice but only 3/16" thick. My pattern bit has a cutting depth of 3/4" so I wanted a thicker template to accomdate it. The solution was to copy the templates onto 3/4" MDF. To do that I cut two pieces of MDF to 9" x 12" and drew horizontal and vertical center lines. I lined up the acrylic templates on the MDF as if the MDF was the guitar body. First, I followed the template directions for marking the center line and post line. In one of the pictures you can see how I initially drew a line incorrectly and had to correct it. Can't erase Sharpee's!

1/15/2005

The next step was to line up the acrylic templates on the MDF and mark the cut-out sections. Once that was done, I removed the bulk of the MDF by cutting over-lapping holes with a Forstner bit on the drill press. I finished up by screwing the acrylic templates to the MDF and then routing the MDF with a bearing bit on the router table.

1/15/2005

I then repeated the steps above for the back-template.

1/22/2005

It's about 15 degrees outside and it's snowing. We're supposed to get as much as 18 inches before it's all over. Where am I? In my garage, routing. It's like working in a block of ice and I can't feel my fingers. In any case, I made the wooden template master a few days ago. From this, I made a single humbucking template out of MDF. The master is made from 1/2" ply-wood. Using scraps of ply, I glued or screwed them to a ply-wood base using the scraps to outline the pick-up. The corners are square but I'll be using a 1/2" bit ultimately so they'll round over in the end.

The first MDF template was OK but I must have made a mistake in my measurements so it came out a bit small. So rather than using a bushing and straight-bit, I went to pattern bit with a bearing and that gave me the width and height that I needed.

The problem I had using a pattern bit was that the recesses for the pick-up screw tabs were too large for my liking. Therefore, I made an adjustment to the wooden master and re-routed a single template from baltic ply.

In an effort to save time on future builds of this guitar, I decided t make a template that had the bridge and neck routes properly spaced on it. This would allow me to simply clamp the "double" template to a body and route both cavities in one fell swoop. The "double" template came out great but again, I must have mis-marked or miscalculated and the neck pick-up cavity ended up almost 1/4" too close to the neck. In the end, I still used it but I had to do one cavity and then un-clamp, align, re-clamp and route the second cavity.

1/29/2005

The next templates to make were the cavity and cavity cover templates. I started by drawing the shape of the cavity on a piece of paper, gluing it to some hard-board and then cutting and sanding it to shape. Here is the template for the cavity cover.

1/29/2005

I used the cover template to make the template for the cavity. I screwed the cover template to some more hard-board and used a 1/2" bushing and 1/4" straight bit to route around the cover template. This gave me a hole that matched the shape of the cover. However, the hole would be 3/8" too big.

1/29/2005

This next part may be confusing. I used the over-sized cavity template to route out another cavity template using the same bushing and bit. This yielded a cavity template that was a little smaller than the last. I did this till I had a cavity template in which the cover template fit. This is just the way I did it. If you would like more information regarding this technique, email me at CudBucket@att.net. Here is my final cavity template.