Great progress on the Firebird this past weekend. First I spent an entire morning sizing up the route for the neck pocket. Because I was widening the existing route by less than 2mm on either side, I was running into trouble with lining up the the jig for the route. I tried three different methods before settling on using an existing jig. In order to achieve the 4˚, I used shims and double stick tape to raise one side of the jig.
The indention in the photo of the neck pocket was created by accident when my router lowered without warning. This happened because the collar holding it at the proper height was not tight enough. I have since taken to tightening the collar using a ratchet set after locking it in the appropriate height. I should be able to sand this indention slightly by hand. And it will be hidden by the neck once it is place.
After routing the the neck pocket I was able to determine the location of the bridge. The tail piece (if I use one instead of a Bigsby) will be far enough back that I can reach the appropriate location with the drill press after gluing the wings on.
Before gluing the wings to the center piece, I drilled a few holes for wiring tow pickups and the bridge ground wire. The holes lined up with the channel that I routed before gluing the curly maple tops to the wings.
The wings were then glued to the body one wing at a time. I discovered after gluing the top wing that if I masked of the wood close to the edge I could easily remove excess glue without having to use a scraper.
After allowing the glue to cure over night I cut off the excess wood from the center piece with the band saw. The body is now ready for me to route the pickup cavities (see photo at top of this blog post.)
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