A few progress pics from this afternoon. I marked the truss rod slot and used a hobby knife to score the lines a bit. Then i went in with a chisel to start cutting the wood along the lines i marked. Thinking about it now, something like my fret saw might have done a bit cleaner a job but i only have the one and don't want to dull the teeth on other things unless necessary. It's a lot easier to sharpen chisels. The first pic is of my router plane in using to cut the channel. You basically shave away the wood until it's deep enough. Shave the channel, adjust the blade a hair lower, shave some more, repeat. Actually goes pretty fast for the most part.


Next is the channel where i left it. It's a bit rough looking at the top because my initial attempts at chiseling and planing weren't perfect, but once you've got a bit of depth going and the channel is straight it practically cuts itself.



The ends of the channel aren't at the same depth as the rest yet so the rod doesn't sit quite at the bottom yet but I'm at about half the needed depth and setting it in confirms the channel is straight. I stopped her because it was starting to get hard to pull the plane through so it needs to be sharpened. I'll get out the water stones tomorrow and bone is edge so it'll shave like a champ again. My chisels could probably stand to have their edges honed again as well for that matter.



And anyone working with tools that are meant to be sharp, make sure you keep them sharp. I nicked myself with my 1/4" chisel today. Stung a bit and bled a little, and it did cut me fairly easily because it was sharp, but the wound is also completely closed now and will likely heal up without a visible scab or anything. Give me a clean cut over the alternative any day.