I just wanted to pass on a tip about an inexpensive gadget that I use to take the lines, or trace the body shape of a guitar. The gadget starts out as a run of the mill carpenter's pencil. I cut a 2 to 3 inch section and then (very carefully!) use a sharp 1/4" chisel to gently break the seams of the cedar on the pencil, splitting it in half length-wise. A slip here can cause some amount of bleeding, so probably it is not a good living room sort of operation!
I then use one layer of black electical tape to cover the graphite core and then I use sand paper to to put a chisel point on the pencil. The pencil can then be held against the side of a guitar without marring finish and you will get an accurate tracing without having to worry about a wobbly pencil.
A couple of photos as it takes longer to type this description that it does to actually make one!
The pencil.
Side view of the pencil.
Pencil in use on old Stella.
I am in the process of taking the lines off of a circa 1920's Stella Parlor guitar that I own. This is a pencil drawing that will include bracing patterns for both the back and the top. Not as fancy as the plans here at the OLF, but there will be enough data to build a reasonable facsimile of an old ladder braced parlor. I should be ready to have reproductions made (diazo printing) in a couple of weeks. If anyone is interested in a copy, please PM me with a snail mail address, just put Stella in the subject line and I'll get one to you. Enjoy!
Seems like there's a 12-bar blues in it somewhere. 