Guitar restoration need advice

[Rybow]

Hello my fellow DIY nerds! Got a woodworking question for you.

my buddy bought an Aria Deluxe explorer style guitar off Kijiji for cheap. It has been “customized” in the most awesome way. We are trying to bring it back to its original body shape for which I bought him a beautiful piece of alder for his birthday.

The cut along the back was made with a jigsaw. It’s not square. I was thinking I might be able to joint it with a router and cut a piece to match, might this is tricky due to all the angles. They only left about 1/4” of wood around the control cavity. Not much to work with.

I was going to make templates of the control & bridge cavities. Then either cut it straight, removing the control & part of the bridge cavity, or cut from the bottom edge to the deepest point of the cut removing part of the control cavity. We have enough wood for 3 attempts.

How would you cool cats approach this?

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Squaring up the hacked off edge seems like the best approach to me. You may want to dowel or spline the joint where you replace the amputated part. Good luck.

 

[sahib]

I would cut it the way I have shown in the picture and re-build. This way you are not messing with the bridge area.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Why cut off the upper rear bout?

 

[sahib]

This would give me a nice, straight line and allow me a tongue-and-groove joint.

On the body surface all I would get is a nice straight line for the joint if I wanted a varnished finish..

But if the surface finishing would be solid paint, then you have a point. It will be a lot easier to simply infill the gap, fill the imperfections, sand down and spray over.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

I would cut minimally. Then construct new part oversized so it can be shaped after it is glued in place. Belt sander, oscillating sander, router with guide template, etc. Then you can blend the joint between old and new.

Do you know what the body wood is?

 

[Rybow]

Thanks for all the input guys. The body is Alder. We stripped the spray paint to discover a white with black dot pattern as the original finish. Not sure yet if we are going to sand it to the wood or paint over it.

I think we’ll start by squaring off the bottom and jointing the upper rear bout. I wish I had a measurement of the width at the rear from an intact model, but I think we can get it pretty close. If we run into issues we can still sheer it off as Sahib suggested.

I like the idea of adding dowels for strength. Thanks for that