There are two major pieces of work remaining on the body before we start working on the top carve. The first is the bridge plane.
Here's a comment from a recent Texas Toast video, by Lou Moritz (who I believe has built for Tony Iommi...), which describes the plane on top of a Les Paul far more simply than I could:
First off, I marked carefully where I wanted the bridge plane to begin and end. The area between the back of the fretboard and the far end of the bridge pickup rout will be joined by a 1.2 degree angle:
And propped the body up in the router box at the correct 1.2 degree angle. I used an app on my phone to measure this angle - it won't have been exact but it was certainly the most accurate way I had to hand of making the angle:
Then I very slowly and carefully routed away the centre of the guitar, to creep up on those 'start' and 'stop' lines I'd marked to outline the plane. The 'high point' of this cut - i.e. the piece of material that gets removed first is apporximately in the middle of the guitar body:
Her you can see how little material was removed in each pass - the pencil lines have been removed by the router skimming over the top of the body. I lowered the router bit by about a quarter of a turn of its stop each pass - it's a really tiny sliver each time to completely minimise the chance of any tear out on the top:
Eventually, I'd made the plane I wanted, and from the side the body now looks like this - just about visible is the 4.5 degree neck plane and the 1.2 degree bridge plane:
I had had a lot of trouble visualising this cut, and practiced before making it. This was my practice cut, which was waaay off. I think I might have cried had this happened to the real thing!
Next up I remarked the position of the bridge (628.65 mm / 24.75 Freedom Units):
And hogged out the material for the pickup cavities based on where they'd sit relative to the bridge and end of the fretboard:
I'll tidy up the pickup cavities next time, and then move onto the top carve. Once that's finalised, the only job left on the body will be the binding
