And then an awful lot of copy-routing ensued.

This time we took the thickness of the lamination into account, and used a bearing router bit to reduce the first layer of the side mould by around 4mm (oh look, is that a top template I failed to mention…   Read more»

Woosh! Didn’t even touch the sides! Oh no, here they are.
Crudely cut lumps of MDF and plywood were copy-routed using the top template I failed to mention earlier.

 
Genius!!!
I’d always thought you’d be sanding and sanding to get the ridges smoothed out into the carve shape you wanted.
Filling it in is so much easier.
 

Tiny little planes don’t tend to carve out long smooth curves, and paper-thin MDF can tear, so car body filler is used to smooth out the dips. Mark says that’s what all the professionals do.

It should have been obvious to me that, if each concentric lofting contour was equidistant, the rise would just be in a straight line. But no, so out came the scrapers to try and realise an elegant arch.
 

The unanswered question at this stage was just how smooth that mould would need to be. We’re not using a huge steaming press, just a little vacuum pump. Will a 4-5mm lamination follow every bump or just approximate the general…   Read more»

Why 3mm layers? Why six of them? Because 5 x 3 plus baseboard gives a height of 15mm and, according to Mr Bagpress (of whom more anon), if Gibson never bent their laminations more than 15mm, then neither should we.  Oh, the unused inners…   Read more»