Making templates
After having designed and drawn the guitar you should make a “flat” guitar from 6- to 10mm-thick plywood on a scale of 1:1. Using these templates and a router bit with end-mounted ball bearing in a table-mounted router the body and neck contours are routed later. Use hard beech plywood for this purpose; if soft plywood is used, the ball bearing of the router could lead to undesired changes of shape. A body and a neck template are required. I even use a separate peghead template as this makes it
easier to plane the fingerboard template edges straight. For an |
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angled-back peghead you always need a seperate peghead |
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template. |
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For making a symmetrical body fasten two pieces of the |
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template material with adhesive tape on top of each other and |
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then cut them out together (1). After rough-cutting the body |
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shape, I use a rasp and sandpaper to smooth the contours. If you |
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then open the two halves that were kind of folded together, you |
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will have a perfectly symmetrical body template from which only |
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the cutaways are missing. If you use a pickguard, its shape has to |
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be taken into account when determining the body shape. Where |
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the body is not symmetrical (2) - and this is fairly often the case - |
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templates obviously cannot be cut out in this manner (i.e. folded up).
It is advisable to take a lot of time for filing and smoothing the template contours (3) as any uneven spots and dents will later be transferred onto the wood and will then be far more difficult to correct than on the thin template. If your work is in danger of becoming sloppy and rushed, it may be a good idea to grant yourself and your templates a little overnight rest and to finish the sanding the next day.
Using a jointer I plane the sides of the neck template from a |
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long, square piece of plywood. To taper it plane the piece over a |
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short length only to start with and then gradually work your way |
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up the entire length. |
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If you then screw the neck template to the body template and |
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also attach the peghead provisionally, you can get a first impres- |
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sion of what your guitar will eventually look like and you will be |
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able to assess its proportions (4). Like it or not, except for the |
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guitar being very flat you see a “life-size” version of your future |
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guitar! |
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It is not a bad idea to first make “master” templates out of 3mm |
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(1/8")-thick plywood as shaping such thin material is much |
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easier. Then make your “work” templates by simply copying |
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them from the master template by means of a table-mounted |
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router and a router bit with end-mounted ball bearing. Keep the |
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master template in a safe place afterwards. |
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