Today I worked on sanding and scraping away at the thickness of the back. I'm down to about .095" in places and am being cautiously optimistic. Hopefully I can get it down to a uniform thickness in just a few runs through Mr. Kitchen's drum sander next week?
Regardless, I'm getting close so my through two started turning toward bracing. I have the spruce billets split, a nice sharp plane and a small bandsaw on hand to get them to the desired thickness, length and height but the plated is still rectangular. I discovered that my plexiglass template was broken however, so I decided to leave my sides in the mold on top of the plate. It was here I discoverex that my back is just slightly narrower than the width of the body. Not by much; at the ends of the lower bout the kerf is slightly exposed; a little trickery with purfling should hide any gap.
Just to be sure, I laid my first guitar build on the plate and found that it wasn't all that bad.
So I traced inside the mold, then added another 1/2"'for wiggle room and turned my attention to the braces.
All that I need to do now is radius the bottoms then I can start gluing things up.