A hair's breadth from you know where...

When finishing things like rosettes and back strips and inlays, you soon find that removing material delicately sucks big time!  I am not one to enjoy hours and hours of work with little results, so I figured I'd find a better way to finish the back strip than waste my time sanding endlessly with a 200 grit hand block (by the way, you don't want a power sander of any shape or size anywhere near your guitar, trust me!).  A small trim router with a good down cut bit, on the other hand, is a totally different story...

I got the idea from some obscure place; it might have been an online forum, it might have been Scott Cayce from the Cayce Company in Hunt Valley where I get my soundboard, back, and side pieces thinned.  Anyway, it's irrelevant - what I wanted to do was alter the base of a small Bosch trim router to make a router sled.  Basically I removed the original plastic base, found some good square red oak stock.  Sized the table saw fence to 1/2" from the blade, and ripped two identical blocks.  I made sure they were the same height with calipers, and chamferred the down-facing edges with a sanding block.  I then marked the bolt holes using the original base as the template.  I drilled the smaller through-hole on the drill press first, then followed it up with the larger recess hole for the bolt heads.  Lastly, I marked the inner curvature of the base where the bit comes through on both blocks and trimmed out the overlap with the band saw.  I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but you can see it action below.

Once I got the router set up, I could take down most of the excess maple without laboring over a sanding block and without risking damage to the back.  Before you start cutting though, make sure you test out your depth.  You don't want to ruin all your work with a deep gouge in your back.  Go nice and slow with even pressure and gentle back and forth or side to side movements to remove the material evenly.  You'll want to blow the saw dust out of the way as you go so you don't end up with inconsistent cut depths.  Once you've gone over the full length once.  Check your work closely to see if there was anything that you missed.  I set my cutting depth so that I could easily finish off the strip with some minor sanding and scrapping.  As the title alludes, you want to be within a hair's breadth of h-e-double hockey sticks, so that you remove as much excess material as possible before you switch to hand work, but not too close that you commit the mortal sin of profaning your back.

After some finishing work with the cabinet scrapper, your back should look like this and will be reading for filling and back bracing!