Next Project-- Advice?

[Mickguard]

This afternoon a friend with a router (my wife's uncle...he's also the drummer in our band!) is going to help me with my Bocaster project...after that, I'll be able to move into the painting and finishing phase with that.

So I'm going to want to get started on the NEXT Bocaster! That's right, I want two...

Once again I'm going to be modifying an existing Telecaster, this one will have a maple fretboard.

This time out, I'd like to make a hollow body/thinline version. I'll want to keep the central core --with its neck pocket and pickup routings. I don't feel like messing with that yet (although I've pretty much decided to buy my own router....)

Then I'll take the wood I cut away and reshape that as a rectangular (rounded bottom) frame and then cap that with some maple sheets.

The maple (assuming I win the auction) will give me 2 bookmatched sheets of 55 X 22 cm X 4 mm (sorry, don't have my inches/centimeter ruler here) and 2 strips of 80 X 11 cm X 3 mm... it's been set up specifically for guitar making.

One question: will maple work as a cap for a (semi) hollow body guitar?

Another question: would I want to cap the ENTIRE surface, including the central core column--will that screw up the neck and bridge angles? I suppose I could route the maple accordingly

Alternatively, I could route the surface along the sides of the core so that the maple fits like wings to the central core.

Whichever way, I'll have a pickguard on there and I'll be painting it (although if the maple looks good, I'll try for something transparent)

Another alternative: keep the face of the guitar intact --that is, do the same mod I've done for my current Bocaster project-- and then route it out from the back and just cap the back...That'll give me plenty of maple left for an acoustic version of the Bocaster!

Well, what would YOU do? I've got at least a month to plan this one...

Okay, time to PLAY some guitar!