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I use a router jig to roughly carve the top. Its my preferred way to remove the bulk of the material so that I can finish up later with a variety of hand tools. I lay a scrap of counter top material on the bench so the body slides smoothly.
A depth stop on the router top carving jig determines how far into the body the cut will go.
Here's a close-up of the depth stop. Its set to reach about a quarter of an inch in towards the middle of the body, and the depth setting on the router is set to take off about an eighth of an inch. This router bit is actually made for hollowing out wooden bowls, but it does a great job of carving custom guitar tops too!
Several passes later, the shape is taking form. The topographical ridges will be removed using finger planes, chisels, scrapers and sandpaper. Once again you can see that quilted maple burns very easily.
The rough carving with the jig took very little time compared to the final shaping that you see here. There's still a lot of sanding to be done, but the shape is complete.
Its not obvious in the picture, but the area between the top pickup route and the neck pocket has been angled to match the neck angle.
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