Carving Up A Walnut Guitar Body

For my Walnut body, I decided to add a nice carve to the top edge. I used a half round Japanese Iwasaki file to do all of the work. It took about 30 minutes and a lot of elbow grease.

Another Guitar Build Underway

This is how I carve a top. I start by drawing a line where the carve will begin.

Next, I use a Safety Planer to plane down the first step about an eighth of an inch.

Then, I draw a line to mark the edge of the next step.

After planing each step down about an eighth of an inch, I'm ready to blend them together.

I use a rasp and a lot of elbow grease to blend the steps.

Finally, I use a palm sander with some 60 grit paper to smooth out the surface.
Later on, I'll sand it further with 80 to 400 grit.

The Highline Single Cut Plan Is Now Available!

If you've always wanted to try your hand at a single cut, carved top electric guitar project, now you can. The design was inspired by the classic shape of a Les Paul, but with a tweak or two to make it unique. The cool thing is you can build it either as a flat top, or if you feel ready for the challenge, a carve top. The side view in the plan shows the carve top's profile, but you'll need some woodworking skills to generate the shape. A while back I posted an article here that explains how I make a carve top. Another cool feature is the wiring schematic. It's based around a master push/pull pot that's wired to coil tap both humbuckers.

As I write this post, I'm spraying my own version of the Highline Single Cut with multiple coats of clear lacquer. So far, it's looking pretty badass! Check out my tumblr blog for Highline Handmade Electric Guitars and Pickups for my progress on this build so far. And yes, it will be for sale once it's finished! ;-)

How I Carve An Electric Guitar Top

There are a lot of ways you can carve the top of an electric guitar. Some luthiers like to use CNC routers to generate the shape while others like to use duplicating machines to do the work. These methods make sense for commercial operations, but what's the best technique for the builder who plans on building one guitar? I make a lot of guitars, but the method I use is perfect for the low volume builder. Here are some photos of how I do it:

I use a Safety Planer in my drill press to plane gradual steps in the top. First I draw lines to mark each step. The position of the lines is eyeballed according to how I want to shape the curves. Since the highest part of the curve in at the center of the body, it'll be left the full thickness of the top. Each step drops slightly with the last one at or near the edge depending on how I want the curve shaped. The guitar pictured here will have a shape similar to a Les Paul, so the edge will be about an inch and a half wide all the way around except at the waist where it'll be narrower. Each step is about 1/16" lower than the previous one. If I have a top that is 1/2" thick, and I have 6 steps down from the center section, the top will end up with a thickness of about 3/16" at the edge.

Since I have to work from the center out, I have to plane from the edge all the way in toward the edge of each step. This destroys my lines, so I have to redraw them before I plane the next step. For that reason, it's a good idea to draw out the lines on a separate sheet of paper and transfer them to the body for each pass of the planer.

The edges of the steps won't look as nice as if they'd been cut with a CNC router, but it doesn't matter since the steps will be blended together.

Once the planing is finished, I'll start blending the steps together.

I've tried belt sanders, drum sanders and random orbital sanders, but the best way to blend the steps together is to use some simple hand tools.

After the steps have been blended, I'll go over the top with some 80 grit sandpaper and fine-tune the surface.

I still have some detail shaping to do, but you get the idea. And that's how I carve an electric guitar top.