The "Cut Your Own Guitar Body" Thread

Be careful with your router!

Signed,

"Old Nine and Three Quarters"

I use a 1/2" diameter spiral cutter with a top-mounted bearing, and I take no more than about 1/2" of depth for the first pass when cutting the outside shape. After that I remove the template and use the previous pass as my 'template' to make the next pass about 1/2" deep.

If you try to take too big a bite, the opportunity for the router to get cattywompus exponentially increases. Small bites. Same goes for neck pocket and internal routs.

The rule to remember is this: run the router counter-clockwise for external routs and clockwise for internal routs. You never want to move the router along the material in the same direction the router pulls.

Feeds (speed of the tool over the material) and speeds (motor RPM) really matter, especially on light-colored woods like maple and pine. Too slow a feed and too high a speed can burn the wood.

Always make sure no portion of the chuck/collet protrudes through the base plate. That will ruin your work and ruin your week.

Never ever one-hand a router. Always two hands. Always wear eye pro. Plain eyeglasses are not good because chips can fly in from the sides and bounce off your eyeballs or worse.

^^^ For body shapes I make my own from 1/4" MDF and fortify the edges with water-thin CA. It hardens the material and prevents mooshing it up with the cutter's bearing. I have been known to visit a guitar store with a rolled-up 18" x 24" piece of paper to trace a shape on it. I usually buy a pack or two of strings while I'm there as a show of good faith for their trouble.

For pickup routes I have a set of acrylic templates I got from Stooge Mac more that 20 years ago. These I stick into place on the body using double-stick tape. and make my first pass. I remove the template and continue deepening the rout.

Other things to plan for:

In the back of the body, where the neck plate goes, there's a 1/8" round-over. The rest of the body usually has a larger radius round-over. So plan carefully where you're going to stop with one cutter and pick up with the other cutter. That little transition area get's carefully hand sanded to make it smooth.  If you carry a 3/4" round-over into the neck plate area, you will be hating your life and everything associated with it 

If you're doing a tummy cut or forearm cut, rounding over those areas is very tricky with a router.  It's better to carefully rasp and hand sand the round-overs there.

Do not drill for a Tele's jack hole before you rout the body round-over.  If you do, the bearing on the cutter will drop into the hole; you'll cut a curve where you do not want one, and you'll be tempted to Frisbee the body into the pond.  So do all the heavy machining before you drill any holes.