Today, Aaron routed an Ibanez body to accommodate a new set of pickups that we were installing. The original routes were just a bit too small, so we had to make some room.
Working with a router is no joke – lose control of it just for a second, and… well, you’ll never play the violin again. Aaron firmly clamped the body to the bench, making sure to not mar the body in any way, and affixed a routing template in the proper position. We never free-hand any routing here in the shop: it’s dangerous and makes for messy routes. We want our routes to look like they came that way straight from the factory.
Here’s a shot of one of our plexiglass templates, which we use for making routes for single coil pickups:
Here’s Aaron working the router (note the safety glasses):
And getting completely covered in a blizzard of sawdust:
Aaron is using our Craftsman Professional hand router, which is a perfect tool for doing detail work like this. It’s stable, quiet, and most importantly: it slowly ramps up to speed, rather than going full tilt the moment it’s turned on, which prevents it from jumping out of the routing template and destroying the guitar and precious body parts.
The completed routes, which he painted with conductive shielding paint:
The routes look completely factory, the pickups fit right in, and nobody lost a finger. A solid win!
