Here we have the beginnings of a new adventure. It starts with some pieces of swamp ash glued together to form a slab big enough to cut a guitar out of. I’m starting with a “paint grade” piece of wood that I can’t totally ruin and premade guitar neck. Eventually I’d like to try to make a neck by hand.
After you have some wood, you need to cut the proper routes out of it to place the electrical components. Luckily, Stewart MacDonald Co (StewMac) have templates available that provide the proper locations and sizes for the routes to be cut.
There are different opinions about when to route the component locations and when to cut the body out of the slab. Right now, I don’t have a band saw to cut out the body, so we’ll start with the routes. This falls in line with the camps that say to do this first. The benefit of doing it now, is that you have more supporting area to guide a router.
I copied the template over and added notations of depth. Double-sided tape was used to hold the template in place while tracing out the template. I used hand drill to drill the string and bridge plate holes. (Mistake number one. I drilled the bridge plate holes all the way through. Good thing I was planning to paint the whole thing. I used some wood putty and filled in the back side.)
The bridge plate and string holes act as landmarks for taking the template on and off. 1/8” drill bits can be inserted into the drill holes and guide the template holes back onto the wood.
Getting used to the pull and push of the router took a while. I did do some testing in an unused part of the blank. Highly recommended.
The outcome isn’t very clean but should be serviceable. Pickups should fit and the neck can be bolted into place.
Next up, schedule some time with my brother Brent and his band saw.