Coutours

So it's been a while . . . life sometimes has to happen too . . .

The next step is to rout the major contours into the body . . . the treble side first . . .

You can nicely see the difference in color between cherry that has been exposed for a while and freshly cut surfaces which are MUCH pales . . . unfortunately the IS some tearout along the backside of the 'horn' - such as it is - The options are to round over the edge, defeating the right angles of the design, cut a piece of closely grain matched cherry (I looked for the chip but was unable to find it) or I may inlay some quilted maple . . . we'll see later . . . maybe thin out that whole area one step further still (NOPE that IS NOT going to work, just checked and there's a relief cut in the back there, see the previous post) . . . have to check if I hollowed out the back there though. The middle picture shows were things went wrong when cutting away the 'waste' from the face of the 'waist'. I know what NOT to do the next time.

Next cutting the 'reveal' for the pickup switch control cavity.

It's actually 1/32 or so deeper than it should be ... one again live an learn, next time I'll drill a 1/4 hole into the cavity once I'm within an 3/16 or so so I can check the exact placing for the last router cut. This time I just advanced bu 1/16's or so and that didn't quite work out the way I thought.

And the mailman came by delivering the brass for the pickup rings and the control cavity cover . . . I don't remember ordering quite this many of the blanks for covers, but then again I'm bound to screw up at least one and now have plenty of spares. BTW brass is A LOT more work to cut that aluminum.

And then, the arm relief carve ....

Once more a bit of an experiment, a rotary rasp on my drill . . . I think I like the carving blade on my angle grinder better, it removes wood faster with more control, but this also works and makes slightly less of a mess. Ofter the removal of most of the waste it was back to a hand rast and file -once again notice the contrast between the fresh cut and the longer exposed wood - I'm still not entirely happy with this, I think the edge should meet the edge of the control rout but I didn't want to go 'too far' here.

And finally for some belly relief . . . not as extreme as the first one but it feels quite nice.