Drilling

     The next step in building your dream guitar would be to drill all the holes (about 18). It was extremely difficult to drill these holes perfectly straight by hand so I used a small version of a drill press. However, the guitar is not flat so I had nothing to rest the unit on. Therefore, I made a small contraption to lay an adjustable 1"x 2" across the guitar so I can rest the press on it. You really have to think ahead about what needs to be drilled because there is no going back once the final paint is applied. Out of all, the hardest one to drill was a 1ft. 1/4" hole on a specific angle going right through the middle of the guitar! I'm not going to lie, this actually gave me nightmares because one flinch and the project would be destroyed since there would be a bursting hole on the top. Thankfully I did it. This hole is where the wires from all sections of the guitar will be running through to reach the volume and tone knobs at the other end.

Routing

To make the necessary holes and spaces for all of the parts to go, such as the pickups, a router is needed. To use a router for carving something other than the edges of your wood you would need to make a template. I did this by carefully measuring the distances from the 12th fret to the front of where I want each pickup to go. This took a long time because I had to do a few test cuts to make sure I was in the right spot. The part that was most tedious would definitely have to be routing out multiple layers within the hole for electronics to rest on. Then there is the thin 1/4" thick cut to lay the plate to cover the parts. This had a magnanimous amount of risk involved but somehow it worked.