Carving A Solid Body Top

Carving a top by hand with chisels and planes is a long process, its fun but a time consuming project. To cut this time down I have a few ways of doing this one way is by use a milling table, some math and a router bit, the top can be carved in about one hour. In factories most carving is done on a panograph router, (or copy machine) this is great if you want to make many bodies with the same arch. However each guitar I make is different so I need to carve each body separately. Many guitars are not carved but actually pressed plywood tops that are pressed into shape using large presses, This is like a ES335. View a video

First the wood needs to glued up. Depending on how much of an arch from the center and the total thickness of the body you will need to plane the wood to the proper thickness.

What I use to figure out the total blank thickness is to decide what the depth of the arch from center to the side of the body will be. If the top will be carved say 12mm (1/2") then figure the body thickness plus 12mm for the top. On many models I also carve the back so I usually start with some very thick wood.(As you can see from the photos) On a body that I will carve the top and back I have to figure out what the total thickness will be when it is finished. If the body will be 40mm thick and I want to carve a 12mm back and a 12mm top I need to start with a 64mm piece of wood. If just the top will be carved than I figure the thickness of the edge of the body plus the amount that will be carved away. After the wood is glued and planed you will need to do some math to figure out the carve. Depending on what type of arch you want you can figure out the depth of each area.

After the wood is glued-up start by cutting out the bodies shape and do as many routs as possible while the wood is flat. After the top is carved routing many areas of the guitar can be difficult. I basically will rout the neck pocket, pickups and if there is any, all the tremolo routs. Once the basic body is shaped we need to find the center of the guitar. If the neck pocket is routed use this for the most accuracy. The reason for this is that the bodies center may be slightly different from the necks center. Put the neck on the guitar and run a straight edge down either side of the neck and draw a line. After both sides have this line find the center of the body with these lines.

On the body you will need to layout the basic idea in lines on the top. I usually like to keep the pickup area as well as the bridge location on a flat surface. I will start carving after these routs. For this example I will make a 12mm arched top from the center. I want the arch to be fairly steep so I will step rout 2mm at atime. Starting from 55mm from the center draw the first line. I will use a 12mm bit to rout so I measure every 12mm's and make another line. For the back by the bridge I want the arch to be less until after the bridge and then carve down, for this I will step rout 1mm depth every 12mm's until I reach the 6 mm depth than I will increase it 2mm every 12mm's.

Place the body on the mill and lock it down with clamps. Make sure that the center line on the body is center with the mill's center line. To do this start at one end of the body and move the table following the line, it should follow the line exact, if not adjust the body so the line is straight.

Next I bring the table up so that when the bit touches the wood it is set at 0. Move the table to the first step line and lower the bit 2mm into the body and mill a straight line.

Continue milling each line to the proper depth. Once the step routing is finished you will see the basic shape of the arched top. From this point I use a round chisel to carve off the sharp edges.

After all the sharp edges are removed I use a orbital palm sander and #80 grit paper to smooth the layers out. After all the lines are sanded out I use #180 and #240 and #320 to final sand out the top.

Now that the first guitar or prototype is finished I want to make a few more, Well I use to need to repeat this process until I stumbled onto the Dupli carver at a local wood show. I seen this and went nuts. I bought a new one the next day. The price for the basic machine was around $750.00, I bought the Porta Cable router and the needed pins, made the table and the total cost was around $1000.00. Thats cheap when you consider what it can do. I make dead on neck copies with it also. The company I purchased it from is Terrco and their phone number is (605) 882-3888

Here is a straight on view of the machine. The left side is the copy area, and this is where the template goes. There are diffrent sizes pins available that match the size and radius of the router bits.

Normally I cut the basic shape of the guitar out on the pin router first to save time. But actually I found that you can easily make the entire guitar with this machine, I found out the hard way that things don't always line up so you need to be very carefull setting up the body that will be carved if you already have the routs in it. In this picture I am lining up the pins.

Once everything is lined up and depending on the wood I set the depth of the router bit higher then the actual final cuts. ( The depth I go on each pass depends on the wood. harder wood not so deep passes but a softer wood like spruce you can go fairly deep. This is actually gutting the wood. The pin is easily adjustable. Once it is set I go back and forth until the basic arch is carved.

Here is the almost finished product.

Then just like with the protoype I use a palm sander to clean it up and presto a carved top.