Once I was happy with the overall shape of the rough cutout, the next step was for John to produce a full-scale mockup. This would essentially take into account scale length and also show where the bridge will end up. Remember that one of the principal considerations was for the bridge to be placed in the sweetest spot possible. It being a multi-scale configuration as well, precise calculations would have to be made in advance as John doesn't have experience building with this shape yet.
The full-scale mockup even included producing a very realistic looking "fingerboard". I was impressed.
Greybeard Full Scale Mock Up.jpg
While this was sent, John commented that the bridge design needs some work. He has never been a fan of the "slanted/tilted bridge", so we both agreed that a new bridge design would be conceptualized for this build, and perhaps for his multi-scale guitars moving forward. It would feature a shape that does not tilt, and it would be perpendicular (to the fingerboard) as it were a non multi-scale guitar. The shape will have "bent arms" to keep the central axis of rotation closely aligned. This is still currently in the works, and I look forward to seeing it progress but we probably won't speak more about it till the body work is done.
However, the mockup was a success and I was happy to proceed further. It didn't take long for John to produce an actual mold, in fact it only took him 4 days from when we first started speaking about designing a new shape!
Greybeard Mold.jpg