Making a Routing Template for the Body

The body of an electric guitar is usually made of a thick slab of hardwood. The luthier roughly cuts the intended contours of the body out of this slab, always leaving a safety margin of a few millimetres. The most common tool for cutting the body is the band saw. Other people such as myself don’t own a band saw and make do with a jig saw which works just as well.

From this raw body you work your way towards the final form by removing all material that is outside the planned surface of the guitar. There is a number of tools you can use for this such as chisels, rasps, a spindle sander, but depending on which tool you use it would take ages and be somewhat frustrating, or you would risk overshooting and removing more than you intend. Cutting away stuff is easier than putting it back. To avoid this sort of problem it is easiest to

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