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I'm looking at carving the top on my first guitar here in the next couple weeks and I currently don't own any finger planes. I have seen where someone has used an orbital sander with progressively finer grits to basically carve a Les Paul type guitar. I've actually tried it with a dummy piece of mdf, and the results weren't bad but it's a little difficult to monitor how much you're removing as it can dig in and/or flat spot quickly. Basically I routed a ledge around my false top, and this determined the minimum height. I then feathered the top down to it in a slight "s" shape. I'm wondering if anyone here has ever tried this method, and whether they have any pros or cons about it or advice as to how to do it with the most control.

I'm sort of leaning towards this being a bad idea, and may be ordering a finger plane in the next couple days so as a second question what size would be recommended as a catch all carving plane? The guitar I'm making is a DC Les Paul and I'll be looking to carve it like a PRS Santana. Also, I'd like to get an ibex, but they are really at the high end of my budget for the moment. Does anybody else have any recommendations for any other brands of convex bottom planes?

I'd imagine an orbital sander will take pretty close to forever. I use a roundover bit to get the edges down to the correct height/thickness, similar to what you do, but then use an angle grinder with a flap disc to remove the bulk, then go to the orbital sander. It's a good method that's been working very well for me.

I don't think it's considered traditional woodworking technique.. but there are all sorts of ways to utilize orbital sanders. I have alot of work experience using both the pneumatic ones, which are totally awesome and feel great in your hand, as well as the more cumbersome electric ones. I recently worked a job building custom vinyl fencing and we assembled the stuff with nail guns and epoxy and used those little pneumatic sanders with 60 grit on them to form, sculpt and blend all kinds of stuff. I spent a good chunk of time working at Warmoth as well and it is common practice to final shape out guitar necks after they've come off the cnc with an orbital sander there. I now do so on my own after I am done with my rasps and files. It just takes a quick, smooth and precise hand to keep it moving and flow with the shapes and curves of whatever you're working with. I will often hold the orbital and use just the edge of the disc to shape volutes and heels and so forth.

Anyway, whatever works for you works, I wouldn't get too caught up in tradition and what others might see as not being the right way to do it. I have never done a carved top guitar, but I have thought about what you are proposing. You could not outright carve it with just the orbital, no way. It would take forever. But if you route ledges, or start with a rasp, or chisels or what have you, you could blend and shape to your final stage with the orbital. I would get some 40 and 60 grit discs and try it out. Let us know how you make out if you try it.

actually, what I have is a rotozip with a really aggressive 40 grit disc and a fairly flexible pad to start with. I should have explained more in depth, I actually did a test on mdf and it didn't take long at all. I've been using orbitals for years as a cabinet maker, it's just while the disc is spinning over the top of the area you're sanding you can't see it edge of that rotozip digs in fast.

Part of this is me second guessing myself on whether or not I'd do it this way. I think if I'm just really careful I can manage it, but I think the traditional finger plane method is a lot less risky. It's not that I'm afraid to do unconventional things, it's just sometimes I like to get some feedback before I go all in if you know what I mean.

I'll post some pictures when I get there.

I do it all the time. I to a step pattern with a router.

Then use a 40 or 60 grit pad and get to work, after the rough shape I go in with an 80 and keep stepping it up to a 220 until I get what I like.

Maybe get a slower or variable speed orbital and use 60 or 80 grit? The technique is certainly viable and produces a result commensurate to your skill, as any method would.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Yup, like what Jimmy says....
You will want to create the rough profile in 1/16" increments, like a topographical map, then smooth with the ROS, then hand-sand with an eraser backer to perfection.
It helps to make a set of patterns for the router profiling:


After routing:

Initial smoothing with the ROS:

After final smoothing with sandpaper:

I start with an angle grinder and a 40 grit flap sanding disk - very fast, very aggressive, surprising amount of control. Then finish up/smooth things with an ROS, and fine-tune using finger planes and scrapers (recurve and the like).

Messy, but works great.

Great pictures. Thanks for those.

I bought one of these from Grizzly - 20 bucks

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Ebony-Mini-Plane/T10268

Like the others above, I did a couple of cuts with a router table to establish some profile lines and the recurve



and smoothed them out with planes and chisels (didn't really use the spoke shave, just the two small planes)





I apologize for the bad lighting on those pics. I should have done more cuts with the router and now I have a pdf of contours taken from an actual LP (I could e-mail a copy if it would help). Also, most plans have the cross sections at several points - make a copy, cut them out and make some templates. Remember to keep the area for the pups flat (actually, I think it has a one degree angle or so) and the 4 degree angle for the neck.)



I didn't finish carving this area until the neck was set - it was much easier to bring the top down to the neck.

These all look great guys, thanks for the feedback!

Interesting, it sounds like this is a fairly common approach. What I'm noticing is the examples here have carves that look fairly soft. They don't look bad at all, I'm just curious if this is due to the design, or the method of shaping. It's also interesting to see that some of you do the pick up routs after the body is shaped while I did mine first. I don't think it really makes a difference except for prep and set up.

I think what I'm going to do is figure out my binding and purfling, use the offset bearing jig for my ridgid laminate router to rout a ledge and channel for these first and then use a box core bit to follow a topo like the examples above. Then I'll bring the contour down to flush out at the perimeter with the top of the purfling.

Freeman, thanks for the offer for the carving pdf's, I think I'll come up with my own for now as I only have about 3/8" of thickness for my top rather than 3/4", so my carve has to be a bit shallower than yours is I'd imagine. I may hit you up in the future though as I'm sure a more traditional carve will happen at some point. When I laid out my guitar I used a top and a back as part of the design so the 3/4" got divided in half to cover the top and back, and then wrapped the sides so it appears as flame maple with no end grain all the way around. It looks good but it was a pain in the @$$, and I don't think I'll do another one like it anytime soon.

I actually angled the heel of my neck to go into a flat pocket and have a neck angle of just about 2 1/2 degrees. Because this is a little flat I routed a recess for the TOM bridge a la Carvin. The back is going to get a subtle "pillowing" of the surface rather than an "s" shaped contour.

Here's some pics before:


and a closeup of the rout for the bridge:

I'll keep you all posted

That looks good flat! I think I would have a hard time carving it just because it looks so good as is, good job on that bridge route!

Sweet looking top!

Looks like a 2 pc flame maple body to me.

Thanks guys, I scored this wood from the cabinet shop I work at, my boss got it for a song. It came into one of our distributor's in a batch of soft maple and they let us go out and cherry pick the whole shipment. I think it was something like $2 a board foot, and this was out of the most figured batch. It's not white white, but maple doesn't stay white forever anyways and I'm going to put a stain on it so it should turn out real nice. I do think I'm going to have to bleach the banding on the one side as it's noticeably more red than the other and I recently changed my color scheme from almost black on the edge to dark orange over popped black grain. The maple is all going to get a black dye first to pop the grain and then an orange to gold sunburst on the face, like this

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-er0EVHBB3G8/TiqsjCmDIBI/AAAAAAAAAtg/BeV4g5FiaLE/s1600/DirtyDozen22_9-12_quiltchar.jpg

I'm going to use bocote as my binding and this color scheme should fit with that perfect.

The carves shown in most of the thread are fairly 'classic', i.e. smooth transitions, bit of recurve. Not the 'sharp' and somewhat dramatic carves you see on a lot of modern electrics and some home built bodies, which I find far uglier that the examples in this thread.

A hand grinder with a flap wheel would be quicker in the beginning. I use one to do the waist contour on start styles. But you have to be careful since these remove wood aggressively....Mike

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Another day, another dollar.

Kind of embarrassing. This weekend I bent my purfling and binding, glued it in then proceeded to sand right through the purfling. I really need to fix my lighting, but really it's all my fault for getting ahead of myself and not sticking to my plan. At first I thought that I had just exposed some pockets that didn't get enough CA glue, but a closer look said different.

So it looks like I'm routing it back off and starting over...