I bought a 24 piece set of clamps for $5 from Harbor Freight (a magical place, full of wonder and amusement) and used them to clamp the kerfing to the guitar sides, with the help of a number of cauls (shown).
I then took a piece of aircraft grade spruce (from www.aircraftspruce.com) and kerfs horizontally and vertically on it. This would allow me to glue it to the inner contours of the 4-ply top with the vacuum press (clamps there to apply some extra pressure).
The next step was to level the freshly attached spruce to the same level as the border of the top. A router was attached to a sled and passed over the spruce.
Eventually, after removing a ridiculously large amount of spruce, the top was ready for trimming and attaching.
The trimmed top is ready. The kerfing is all in place.
I bought a 1-1/4" dowel, 24 bolts, 48 washers, and 24 wing nuts and made 24 spool clamps for only $25 (compared to stewmac's $21 for 6). Along with the spool clamps, i used a $10 deep throat clamp from HF and 2 irwin clamps to apply pressure to the centerblock.
The guitar sides and back joined together.
This will look lovely.
My next step is to repeat the spruce cutting and shaping process for the front of the guitar, along with routing the f-holes. The extra laminate extending outside the sides will be trimmed off using the spindle sander. I will soon need to order these parts/tools: rosewood fretboard (pre-slotted), fret-wire, holly veneer (headstock), binding, plunge router, router bits, machine heads, ToM bridge, stopbar, pearl inlays, pickups........
Hopefully I won't spend too much money on that.
I posted a video on my YouTube channel showing my process for pressing the guitar tops. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agj-PRrwWZQ
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