Enlarging pickguard cut-out for rosette

[guitar4fun]

I recently purchased a pretty Martin Delmar pickguard over the phone and I was determined to install it my non-Martin guitar. It fit perfectly, except my rosette is 5-1/8” and the Delmar was originally made for a 4-7/8" rosette. Martin said this is a pickguard for their 000-28EC Eric Clapton model, and my guitar is a Recording King RO-127. So I had to increase the size of the cut-out for the rosette ever so slightly and keep it perfectly round. See the first photo to see how it originally covered up over half of the rosette on my guitar.

I knew I couldn't accurately cut this thin hard plastic material free-handed, so after looking online for possible solutions, I came up with an idea. I purchased a 5" X 1" hard plastic wheel and wrapped tape around the outside until its diameter measured just under 5-1/8". I then put strong double-sided tape around it, and finally cut and attached 3/4" wide strips of 220 grit sandpaper around the diameter of the wheel. Had to be careful how to overlap the ends of the sandpaper to accommodate for the direction of the spin or the paper would just rip off. A short bolt and coupling nut inserted into the wheel center made a perfect attachment for my drill press. I made a little wood platform with a cut-out slightly larger than the wheel, and adjusted the height so that the top of the platform was at the level of the center of the wheel. See the second photo for the little wheel jig mounted in my drill press.

After sanding the cut-out to the rough size, I used a razor blade scrapping at a 45 degree angle to clean up and soften the edges. Finally, a little polishing on my buffer wheel and it looks pretty good (may need a bit more polishing). See the last photo to see how it turned out.

Please note that the first and last photos contain two different pickguards. I have two guitars that require the same model pickguard, and I didn't think to take a "before" photo of the first pickguard before enlarging the cut-out. So I took the "before" photo with the second pickguard. Hope that's not too confusing.

It was a rather lengthy set-up process, but the actual sanding took less than a minute.

[Shuksan]

Pretty cool method. Thanks for posting it.

[Earl49]

Nicely done, and a clever jig. it always seems like the set-up takes way longer than the job, but you did it right. With only standard rings for a rosette (no fancy abalone or marquetry) I might have just let the original part cover it up. But what you did looks good.