Cutting the body shape

Using my plans, I used tracing paper (because I don't want to cut up my plans) to make a exact copy of the body shape. I used spray mount to stick this copy to a sheet of card, which I cut out with a scalpel on the "outside" of my marked line. This card template was them placed on to a 20mm MDF board and used as a template to draw around, again, on the outside.

The reason for the above is that the end result gives you the shape of the body for your guitar with around 1 or 2mm extra all around. You can take away this extra later when finishing by hand as it is best to have a bit too much than a bit too little wood to play with. Here is the finished MDF template. It takes quite a while to cut these out using a jig saw and sanding to the final shape. But time spent getting your templates right is invaluable as it sets the standard for the end result. You can always re-use them too, so it's worth making the effort to get them perfect.



Because of the type of router I am using, sticking the template to the body wood meant that the first pass to cut out the body shape would mean trying to remove a lot of wood in one go. To overcome this, I raised the template by sandwiching off-cuts under it to "float" the template. I then clamp all this up and make a few passes around the edge of the guitar body, removing about 3 or 4mm each pass.



Once I have done a few passes, I un-clamped the whole thing and removed the template before re-applying it directly to the body. I can now carry on running passes around the body to cut out the rough Les Paul shape.



What I am left with is the roughed out shape of the guitar with a little extra all the way around.







It looks a little rough, but there really is plenty to play with and quite a lot of work still do do to achieve the final shape. But this is an excellent start.

Whilst I was at it, you might notice I also cut the slot for the wiring channel using the template technique described earlier. An original 59 Gibson would have been drilled through from the jack point but I don't have a drill bit anywhere near long enough. So I did it the modern way and routed a channel.