I will be shaping my first head stock soon. I have pitbull neck...no body yet...and I figured i should get some finish on it to protect it, but first I should cut the head stock.
I agonized about how to cut it, and finally did a freehand drawing. From this I made a router template with a jigsaw. That more-or-less worked after some sanding, but I was concerned that the sides were not absolutely 90 degrees. So I used the jigsaw-ed template to make a 2nd template on the router table. Second template had nice vertical sides, but one of the curves seemed cut too high. Being a student of the Simon Barden school of luthiery, I filled in the high cut with some veneer, and after a bit of sanding it seemed good enough to test. The good news is that the template seems good. The bad news is that just as I finished routing a piece with the new template, the bearing in my flush trim bit seized. Then it popped off the top of the bit and flew off to God-knows-where. I had just finished routing, and the template came away fine, but I might have damaged the neck if I had elected cut it rather than doing a test first. I have a new router bit in the mail, as well as a replacement bearing for the old one.
Is there any other caution I should take? The router always makes me nervous, but I don't think I'd do better with a rasp...