So the story continues, but things didn’t went quite well. I made some mistakes routing the body and it took a while before I got the hang of it: changed to a new (sharper) bit and lowered the router speed. So finally I got it right, but then, this already happened:

Luckily I found the piece back and it fit good, so I glued it back:

And rasped it close to shape:

After routing, I was happy to see this:

On the other end of the body, I encountered a small black hole:

But some Titebond and a toothpick got that fixed too:

So, I ended up with this, which is pretty okay:

But still, the routed edge wasn’t perfect.. few rough spots and some other very small tear out (sort of grain damage). I filled the very small tear out with a little glue and sawdust, and spent over two hours sanding the edges from 40 up to 180 grit. Now, I am almost satisfied and the body has got a pretty smooth edge:

I also joined the two parts of the veneer by hand: clamped the pieces under a straight hardwood neck blank, slightly protruding, and sanded them flush with a sanding block. Really easy and a very good result. I taped the two parts together with masking tape and on the other side, you can barely see the joint anymore.

So. I learned a lot this weekend!

Next up: control cavity.