Was able to *mostly* make the pickup rings today. This was my 2nd attempt. The first was a failure that emphasized why, of all my tools, I fear the routers the most. I screwed my template to a piece of maple. The rout is for a lipstick tube that is about 5/8" wide. So I used a 1/2" forstner bit to clear out wood from the center of the template, to make it easier for the router...

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...but not enough material. My router bit is on the large size (1/2") which was too close to the same size as the fortner bit I used to remove material. Add that my piece of maple was quite thick (3/4"). All I heard was "wham!" You can see the result. It actually bent the screws that were holding the template in place.

2nd go round went much better. First, I drilled two starter holes at each end of the template that were 5/8", the removed most of the rest with the 1/2" forstner bit. Had to be really careful because the template is only a hair wider than 5/8. I started the router in one of the 5/8" holes, and then removed material VERY slowly being careful not to let the router bind.

This time it went smoothly, and I got a good rout. Man maple is hard!

Next step was stand the maple board on one end and remove 5/16" of the material out of the middle of the 3/4" side of the maple chunk. That was slow and smoky on my cheap little table saw. After that I just cut the four sides to the right dimensions.

I still need to sand the bottoms of the rings to fit the curved top of the guitar, here's more or less how they'll fit:

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Keeping fingers crossed that I don't break anything during the sanding phase!