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Excellent stuff, thank you, you’ve addressed two of the main things that I was mulling over - body edge shaping and arm/belly cuts.
My carpentry experience mainly extends to building endless model aircraft from balsa and ply when I was younger, and home DIY since. Routing is a whole different level of sharp, spinning things, so I’m approaching it with caution.
It's really easy for the router to drift slightly off vertical, especially around the horns where there's not much support for the router base.
Yeah, I worried about exactly that. I was thinking I would use a jig saw (would that work alright? I don’t want to buy a bandsaw, if it can be avoided) to cut the blank roughly to shape, and then use the offcuts to support the router. I’m keen to use the router to shape the sides, I feel like it’ll give me a more accurate finish?
The robo-sander is interesting. I was planning to get a pillar drill, but hadn’t considered using it for sanding. A good alternative to a spindle sander.
I’ve mocked up what I think it’ll look like, although the brushed, anodised pickguard might not happen:
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rodan
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I was thinking I would use a jig saw (would that work alright? I don’t want to buy a bandsaw, if it can be avoided) to cut the blank roughly to shape, and then use the offcuts to support the router
Yeah - I think that would work really nicely. To do the same job I've made myself a router box and added some rails to the router - works pretty well - but I had more routs to do than you'll need (top carve, and planes on a LP) so it's probably overkill.
The finish on the robosander is actually really good - but routing is definitely the more common way. However, I nicked my first two (painted thankfully) bodies whilst routing so won't go back to it!
I know Gil Yaron uses them, though possibly he follows up with a router pass as well to get the better finish you refer to. The second picture is the finish you get from the robo.Edit: I could easily turn this into the DIY thread :D
christianSpaceman
That looks great - look forward to seeing it underway. Body shape looks spot on to me.
When you come to building, I don't know how experienced you are with routing / carpentry so apologies if this sounds patronising.
As well as the body templates I really recommend building router jigs or supports for every rout you do - never 'freehand' anything and try to avoid any steps where you're running the router on the body and it's only supported by you.
It's really easy for the router to drift slightly off vertical, especially around the horns where there's not much support for the router base.
If you've got space / interest, you can get a cheapo pillar drill (£50ish) and robosander (£20ish) to use instead of the router for the body - it's slow and dusty but safer and quieter, I much prefer doing it that way!
Edit: for arm / belly cuts, grab yourself a Shinto saw rasp - they're amazing, you'll start using them for all sorts of tasks.