Another week, another blog, and they're getting closer.

I've been pretty busy lately and it's getting to the point where I sometimes have difficulty hearing myself think. Today was another productive friday. I laid out my pickup locations first thing this morning and got routing. Everything went smoothly there and I was done in little over an hour. The more efficient I get at routing, the more I really enjoy it. After the pickup routes were done, I did some planning of how the control cavity and control cavity cover is going to work out. I had already drawn things out on my blueprint, but there were just a couple of minor details that I wanted to work out.

I decided that I should make the cover before routing the ledge in the control cavity that the cover will attach to. As I am making the cover out of wood to match the grain and figure of the top, I had to laminate 3 pieces of very thin wood together, with the center piece having the grain 90 degrees to the grain of the other two pieces to add stability. I got this glued up and will unclamp it after the weekend. I hope it turns out well!

I also routed the control cavity and output jack location. After this was done, I realized that there were just a few more things left to route, 2 of which I never made templates for. I thought I was done making templates for this guitar! I guess not. I spent an hour or two making a template for the battery box and the spring cavity cover recess route. The spring cavity recess route will make the spring cavity cover flush with the body and I won't have it degrading the guitar by sticking out and making it uncomfortable to play. The battery box will stick out a tiny bit, but will not be uncomfortable because it will be close to the tail edge of the back of the guitar.

Here is a shot of today's progress routing the body:

And the control cavity cover wood being laminated. I used lots of clamps on this one, so let's hope that I got them on and cranked down in time... You can also see the template for the spring cavity cover recess route clamped up int the background.

I have been diligently chopping away at the archtop, but the process seems to be going even more slowly as I find myself working on it nearly every night. I got my f-holes cut last thursday and finally finished the graduations last night. The project for this weekend is to get the f-holes cleaned up so I can start fitting the braces on Tuesday and hopefully get them done quickly using Benedetto's carbon paper fitting method.

Here's the top with the f-holes rough cut by hand with a coping saw:

I'm really excited to see the archtop start taking shape, but I'm also starting to get worried that it may not get done by mid-may in order to get a finish on it, but I'm going to keep moving forward. I do have a week break after graduation before the advanced finishing class starts, so who knows, I could get it done...