I sanded the cover I put on last night down to the body, it came out great. This is just roughly shaped, I'll bring it all in once I do final sanding. I have one small void where I went too far with the saw while cutting the piece out, but I should be able to fill that in easily.
I got the pool route done to cover over the holes where the old bridge was. It's a good thing I did this, there was a gap between the maple block I put in and the top, depending on how long my bridge screws were that could have been a problem - there's no way that piece of sapele on the front would support the bridge.
I didn't take any pictures along the way, I got in the zone and just moved through it. I routed the top, then I cut a piece of maple to fill in the gap between the block and the back - it was maybe 1/8" gap, so nothing too big. I guess at this point I have quite a piece of plywood that I built up one piece at a time.
I used tiger maple to fill in the route. I found my jig for making matching covers, but by the time I found it I had already routed the hole, so too late to use it. I reverted to the old school method of making a matching cover - essentially brute force. I cut a piece of paper so it fit in the hole perfectly, then transferred that to a thin piece of wood, then slowly worked my way around the cover to remove anything that stuck out until I got a tight fit. I had to be careful as I got close to the end as there would be no way to pull it back out if it got stuck in there. When I do covers I can always push it back out through one of the holes for the controls. It seems like it's a really tight fit all the way around. Once I was satisfied I tapped it in with a hammer. It seemed like it was in tight and really didn't need clamps, but since I have the bag I thought I might as well use it. I was surprised how much more glue oozed out as I removed the air. This thing is very useful!
The only pic I took:
I think this is the last thing I need to fix, seriously at this point I think I could have made a whole new body in the amount of time it took me to fix this one.
I might try to get the headstock cut and tuners holes drilled this afternoon after tackling a few honey dos. I have more clean up to do on the neck as well, especially on the transition. I guess I could be ready to start finishing this by the end of the week, that's pretty cool.
I got a Whammy pedal a few months ago and I was thinking that this will essentially be the Whammy pedal on "octave up" mode except I can't turn it off, how's that for a motivating thought :-D
