Bob: ouch! Hope those fingers heal up. And I completely agree that a template is the way to go if you know exactly the shape and size of what you're making. Since I rarely do, well, not much point for me.
Todd: I didn't come up with myself, and I can't take pictures this time 'round (nothing to take photos of right now, sadly), and I don't know where I read about it, but I'll try in more precise language:
- The taper of the back is pre-determined. Let's say the depth at the heel is going to be 3.5", and 4.5" at the tail (bit extreme, but still).
- We'll assume that the the blocks (tail and head) are already cut down to size; they're the height of the final, finished thickness of the guitar (minus plate thickness, and ignoring any effect of top arching for the moment)
- Take two pieces of wood, same height, and place them on the radius dish, and rest the guitar on them (one piece of wood 'propping up' each block), back towards the dish.
- Your body will be 'tilted' towards the headblock, because it's shorter. The unprofiled back edge of the sides will be an uneven distance from the dish, but shouldn't be touching it (if they are, you need bigger 'props' to hold up the body by its blocks)
- What you want to do now is somehow 'trace' around the whole rim set, keeping the distance between the dish surface and the pencil point the same. Easy solution: piece of scrap with a hole drille through it for the pencil. This contraption (keeping pencil equidistant from dish surface) is used to 'trace' around the rimset, marking the profile.
- To make a wedged body (that is, on that also has a side-to-side taper), you can angle the surfaces of the block propping up the head and tailblocks, and to the same kind of thing, or blace bl
- Even easier altenative: if the rimset is perfectly square, sides an even width/depth all around, and parallel, you simply take one piece of scrap, the height of the difference between headblock and tailblock (ie, the amount of taper), place it near the headblock, and prop the rimset up on it; the sides will touch the dish at the tail, and be elevated by the amount of taper at the head end. Trace around as before.
Hopefully that helps a bit. Basically, you're propping up the guitar so that the imaginary 'flat' plane of the taper is horizontal to the imaginary 'flat' plane of the dish. If that's still vague, I'll try to draw a picture :-)
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Beside that I wanted my fellow OLF'ers to see another way of doing things. 
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