It’s a rout
Sunday, I quickly learned the #1 rule of routing: IF YOU DO NOT CONTROL YOUR ROUTER, YOUR ROUTER WILL CONTROL YOU. And you won’t like it. You will soon see what I mean. So following the routing method suggested by my one book, I used spray adhesive to glue a complete copy of the pattern onto the wood. I decided that I’d help myself out a little and perhaps avoid the confusion of all the lines by highlighting the stuff I wanted gone.
So then I put on my safety goggles and dust mask and turned on the router, into which I’d put a 1/8” router bit and found the widest space I could find to plunge it in.
After moving it just a little, I checked to see how I was doing. It didn’t seem to be going very well, and there was a lot of paper mess. Perhaps I was supposed to use ultrathin tracing paper instead of regular copy paper?
As you can see, it’s sloppy, and I’m routing outside of the lines already. Doh! I also noticed that I hadn’t adequately tightened the router base after I initially set the depth, and it had slipped. The cavity was about twice as deep as I needed it to be. It was all kinds of bad. I kept going, though, figuring it was already garbage and it couldn’t hurt me to keep practicing with the router. The paper was a mess both on the wood and on my router bit, which took some cleaning later with Goo-Gone to get the crud off. Years and years ago, some salesman gave my dad a sample of this new product he was hawking called Goo-Gone. It has been a staple in the family ever since. This shit is amazing, and gets gummy crud off of everything.
2nd Try
So I flipped over that disaster to the clean side of the wood and decided to use an Exacto knife to scribe the lines of the design onto the wood after taping the pattern to the block (rather than glue it again), and that goes pretty well, although an Exacto knife doesn’t corner real smoothly; however, the scribe for exactly this work is in the mail and should arrive any day.
I decided my other problem is that the router bit was too big for the design, so I put in one that’s half the size and started routing. I could immediately see that it was going to be better, and without the paper in the way, I could actually see what I was doing.
I still slopped over the lines, but not quite as badly as round 1, and I’m assured by my books that it’s a lot easier to do so in very soft wood. In my case, I’m using MDF, which is supersoft and has no grain. Ultimately, I will work my way up to hardwoods, as that’s what I’d use on a guitar neck, which is usually rosewood or ebony. But one of the guys who gave me the wood said to learn to use my tools on something that isn’t going to fight back, and I’m taking that advice. I think in subsequent practice projects, I will go even smaller on the bit, for more control.
So I took my design, which I glued together on a piece of wax paper the night before (and ended up filing off random bits of glue and wax paper off of when it didn’t come cleanly off—I’m going to have to find a better way on that) and tried to fit it into the design that was now routed. Anyone see what’s coming? It became instantly obvious that my precision scribing and routing to the pattern wasn’t going to work because my sawing was not that precise. It wasn’t going to fit into the space I’d routed for it. Also, I ended up trying to fit it 4 ways, because, like a moron, it didn’t occur to me to make any orientation marks on the wood to guide me when I tried to place the inlay in later. Doh!
I could’ve tweaked what I had until it did fit, I suppose, but I figured I could use the practice, so I grabbed another square of wood and prepared to rout it one more time. Having learned from my mistakes, I glued the design right onto the wood with the spray adhesive and let it sit for awhile. Once it was good and stuck, I scribed around the actual design as it was, not the pattern, and made sure I noted the proper orientation thereof. I felt confident that this was going to be a lot more accurate. This is, in fact, the way inlay was traditionally done, and probably still is by many. The “routing through the paper pattern” dealio I started with was a shortcut. So much for that, at least for now.
Here’s the 3rd routing. Again, not perfect, and I think more practice and a smaller bit will help that, but still showing improvement. It’s the best of the 3, certainly, and has a good chance of fitting the shell.
It took a little elbow grease and a couple router fine tunings, but I got the pieces in there. As you can see, there are some gaps from inaccurate routing. Bit of a bummer, that, but not unexpected, seeing as I realized I was outside of the lines as I did it. Routers are aggressive, and if they can sink into wood, they will and keep going until you muscle it back. 
The depth was right this time, too, and it wasn’t sticking up above the surface of the wood. So far, so good.
So then I had to dig out the pieces, fill the cavity with superglue, and put them back in. I then filled the seams with more superglue and let it sit for the night.
