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Route Neck Pocket After Body Has Been Cut Out


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Some do all the routes first, if you are making a strat for example, and have a full s t of templates - it does make sense to do the neck pocket, bridge and pickup routes first.

Personally i always do the body shape first

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I always shape the body first. Routing a neck pocket first sounds like a recipe for disaster, the way I build. Partly it's because I mostly do set necks, and the carve I end up making (kind of on the fly) dictates the neck angle needed, not the other way around.

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there is no place for my router base around the pocket because of the body shape, so i can re-route the pocket to make it smooth and be shure it's even if i can lay the base of the router on something.

Your router base needs to be following a tempalte, which can be much, much bigger than the body it's sitting on, and even (if needed) fixed elsewhere. Look for the pics of David Myka's neck pocket routing jig (they're around somewhere), for example.

Unless you've carved away all the flat areas on your guitar top already (I do that after I've done pickup, bridge and neck pocket routes, if I bother to do it at all), you have plenty of space to affix your neck pocket template, no matter what shape your body is.

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Also, I always save the cutoffs of the body wood--since they're the same height as the body, they provide the perfect support for the router base. You can add the same material as your template to the cutoffs to get the exact height you need.

I think it's easier to get your neck pocket done right the first time around, then to muck about adjusting it later (speaking from experience).

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