Last night was partly productive. 3 of the 4 molds are now cut but I keep getting hung up when cutting the waist so it pulled the blade off the track 3 times and YJ had to step in and manually work the mechanism so that I could back the mold out. The second time around he sliced his thumb pretty bad on the metal housing (not the blade thank God) and blood was spilled. He looked a bit peeved about it and I feel terrible. Sorry about your finger and your band saw, YJ.
On the bright side I now have three of four finished molds so after a little sanding we could conceivably have a working semi-mold. YJ tells me that ideally I should have an upper and lower mold since my guitar's sides will be a little over 4.5" deep.
Another setback was that my top split after we'd joined it last week. YJ managed to fix it though so we'l see if it'll survive me running the thickness sander. After blowing up the band saw I moved on to that step and it was slow going - and naturally I marred the top by lifting up on the board before the board had cleared the drum. There's a nice burr there but it should sand out eventually. I got the board down to .169 from its starting thickness of .199 but the sandpaper started gumming up so I had to quit. I need to get another roll of 80 grit so that I can get it to at least .125.
In the meantime I still need to dream up a rosette and next time I need to get there earlier so that I can run some rosewood scrap through the table saw so that I have some binding to work with.