Sawn-Off Horn

No, I've not branched out into illegal ivory trading - I sawed a chunk off the lower horn of the body on Sunday, the only part of the body where I was able to quickly remove a decent-sized chunk of wood.

First I sketched onto the body the design I posted last time, with two lines - one to indicate where the edge of the body needs to be, and one where the edge of the top will be, since there is a curve to the profile of the edge of the body all the way round. I may yet decide to flatten off this curve all the way round the body as recreating it consistently on the bits I'm reducing may be rather tricky, but that's a debate and decision for another day.

I was expecting the plywood to splinter quite badly, so I decided to saw off a small piece from the end first, so I could gauge how close I'd be able to go to where I need the end of the horn to be without the splintering going into the bit that I need to keep. However, as you can see, there was almost no splintering at all:

I then sawed off a second piece, as close as I dared go to where my sketched line was, while still giving myself a bit of leeway:

And here they are, lined up on my design sketch:

So that's it for sawing - next will be shaving, carving and filing to get the body down to what I want. It'll be a time-consuming process I expect but I'm willing to take my time in order to try to achieve a good result. I'll post updates as and when I make progress!

Last of all, since the idea of this is to reduce the weight of the body, I weighed the two chunks I sawed off - put together they're 75g! So I've not lost a lot, but it's only the beginning.