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I had to replace the top on this guitar as it had severe bellying after only a month (I think the wood may have been too green, arghhhh!). At the customers request, I am replacing the original Adi top with a torrefied Adi top.

The first several steps that I don't show are removing the neck, bridge and PG from the body. Then I glue up the new top, profile it and use double sided tape to stick the new top to the old body. I also place tape around the perimeter to protect the side from the router bearing.

Then I center the new top on the old body, stick it in place and flush rout the new top to the shape of the old body.

I should add that the new top is thicknessed to about .125" because I want a little extra when I rout in the matched profile. I forgot to take pics of the final cutting of the profile but here's what I do. I set my binding router up to the thickness I want the new top to be (in this case I set the depth to .110" and the binding channel to .060'), then I make the cuts. This leaves a .015" thick ledge around the profile which I sand off on my thickness sander leaving me with a .110" top that should drop right into the body once the old top is removed.

Now I set up my router to cut the top off. Notice I had to fabricate a spacer in order to get the router bit to cut deep enough along the inside edge of the binding and the depth is set to the thickness of the new top (.110"). I use the same size bit as I use for my binding jig, a 1/4" 2 flute spiral down cut bit. Then I make the cut. You can see this leaves the binding in place.

Then I have to cut through the six tucked braces and using a hot pallet knife I remove the top from the neck and tail blocks. There is a little clean up work but the new top fits nicely into the old body. Don't worry too much about small gaps they will close up when you glue up the new top the the body as there is some flexibility in the sides.

Thanks for posting, It was great to see the pictures and your explanation.

This part is pretty standard. I cut the rosette channels, installed the rosette, and cut out the sound hole.

Then I braced up the top, carved the braces and glued on the new top.

Sanded, gaps filled and in the spray booth.

Nice project and documentation.

You make it look easy. Nice job and thanks for posting.