You know what this guitar needs? Holes.

Looks like it's got plenty of holes to me

Here we are again.

That magical time when a man and his router think toward guitars.

I mean, I could just sit here and fiddle with bindings and chip out ( by the way - at some point we're gonna need to deal with those bindings and chip outs) - but where's the fun in that?

No! It's time to dig some holes!

(For some reason I have Craig Ferguson's voice in my head while I say this.  ...and now you do too.)

As you can see - holes were dug. Here's how it all went down.

A guitar needs a certain amount of holes - a semi-hollow guitar more than other types. 

You need the holes for the pickups, the tone and volume controls. You also need the hole for the input jack and the pickup selector switch.  Some of the more esoteric orifices you will need are holes in the pickup cavity for the wires to the volume/tone knobs.  In a sense - you need holes within holes.

As it happens I have already made the holes for the bridge (for the screws that hold it down and the holes for the strings to thread through the body).  I also made the neck pocket and the sound hole.

So, what I'm saying is - there are a bunch of holes in this thing.

This was my iPhone's "Yellow Period"  Kind of like Picasso's Blue Period but dumber.

On this day I started with the tone/volume/switch controls. 

Here's a thing you should know if you are just starting out in woodworking - wood splinters.

No, seriously, if you drill through a board (or in this case a guitar top) the top of the hole will look nice and neat but the other side of the board will look like a splintered mess - unless you brace it with something.  The easiest way to do this is to put a piece of scrap wood under your workpiece and drill through both.  The thing you care about will look good and the scrap will not.

Yeah, I kinda screwed myself on this one.  There's no way to brace the underside of the top while I drill through it as I can't get any wood into the body of the guitar and under the top to brace it.
What's the take-away?  Pre-drill stuff like this before you glue the top down.

"What's the difference?  No one can see it."

True.  But, if the top splinters like that it becomes weaker at that spot.  Also, I have to put a control potentiometer (pot for short) under there.  It'll be easier to attach to a clean (non-splintered) surface.

So, what I did to mitigate the splintering was to drill a small hole and use a reamer to make the hole bigger. The reamer cuts "out" not "down" so there is less splintering.  And that worked - to a point. Specifically the point of the reamer touching the inside of the guitar preventing me from going any further.
From there I used three or four drill-bits of ascending sizes to 'ream' the hole.
Yeah, I thought that was going to be easier too.  Murphy was an Optimist.

By the way - I'd love to tell you what size these holes should be but as the four different Pots that I used as guides all had different diameters - you should probably measure yours if you are playing the Luthier Home Game.

Just airing out my bits...

Next came the input jack hole.  Again - another learning experience.  What I should have done was to use a forstner drill bit of the correct size and drill the hole once.  Instead I ended up using two standard drill bits and two paddle drill bits to 'step' my way up to the correct size. Yes, it was messy.
Listen to me:  Don't do it this way.  It's a waste of time.  Use the right tool for the job.  Especially when you HAVE the right tool for the job.  Luckily I also had a drum sander bit (man, I have a lot of drill bits...) and was able to sand the hole clean.

I think I've seen this image somewhere before...

The pickup cavities:  This actually went pretty well.  Eight years ago (good gravy!) when I started this build, I bought the pickups and made a template out of them - just for this occasion.  So, I was ready to go.  See that kids? Planning ahead can have positive effects.  If you've been reading along - you get the gist.  There was a router bit with a pattern tracing ball-bearing on it and I traced the pattern with the router.

Might be time to sharpen this guy

The toughest part about this process was drilling the holes in the pickup cavity for the wires to connect to the switches and knobs. After my first build I bought a super long drill bit (again, more bits) just for this job.  But somewhere along the way the bit snapped in two.  I tried using the remaining piece (and it DID work) but it wasn't a clean cut (as you can see) and I'll be getting a new one of those bits soon.

We're in a hole to nowhere.  Come on inside.

I do still have some shaping to do on the pickup cavities as the pickups don't fit as nice as I'd like - but that's just a few minutes work with a chisel.  For the most part - this puppy has all the holes it will need.

Okay, maybe not all the holes.  There's the strap holes, mounting holes for the pickups, and then there's the holes for the tuning peg screws, a hole for the neck adjustment screw...