I found rough template drawings on the intertoobs, and made up a routing template out of cheap pressboard. Fun fact: the Danelectro is actually made out of a plywood core sandwiched between two 1/8″ pressboard faces. Told you they were cheap.
This template also shows rough placement for the bridge and lipstick pickups (more on those in later pics).
I copied the template to some cheap pine, and took a jigsaw to it to rough out the inside hollow section. I then used a table spindle sander to smooth the cutout shape to an inch from the outside edge. This secondary template is copied to make the actual body
I glued two sheets of 3/4″ plywood together, transferred the template drawings to it, then rough-cut the shape out with a jigsaw. I stuck the pine template to it with double sided carpet tape and used a flush-trim bit on a router to follow the template and make a clean body.
First upgrade: original Danelectro’s used whatever cruddy plywood they could get for cheap; I used some nice oak ply left over from a previous cabinet build.
And, two sheets of pressboard rough-cut for the back and front faces. That’s all I can do on the body for now though; the neck needs to be built before the final placement for the neck pocket, pickups and bridge/tailpiece can be determined.
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