2012 TDPRI Tele Build Challenge - body top and back

Today, I turned my attention to the body. First, I glued the mahogany veneer to the back of the curly maple top. I taped the veneer on both sides of the area to be cut in order to stop the veneer from crumbling and splitting. I then clamped the veneer between two pieces of wood before cutting it. I then covered the back of the curly maple top with a generous amount of Tite-Bond. I placed the veneer over the glue, then used a pipe to smooth out the bubbles. I placed several pieces of wood on top of the veneer, clamped them into place and then added weights.

I then turned my attention routing the body. I started by working on the electronics cavity. First I drilled holes all the way through the body. Then I routed out the excess wood.

I flipped the body over, clamped a jig for the cavity cover and routed for the cavity cover.

Next, I grabbed the piece of wood that was re-sawn off the original piece of maple. I lined up the location of the electronics cavity and cut out the cover. This way the grain lined up. As always I cut to just outside the lines. Then I slowly sanded the edges to the lines. Followed that by slightly beveling the edges.

I'm a little concerned about that the top has started to bow. I've run into this issue before on the Steinberger copy. In that case the Tite-Bond and clamping while glue helped secure the top evenly to the body. However, there was a lot more surface area glued to the top. On this build I will be routing out quite a bit of the interior before gluing. So, we'll see how this turns out...