Since I had a router table sorted it was time to get started on the control panel base. Knowing what I know now I would have never mangled this cab and I would have started from scratch. That being said I cannot change the mistakes 10 years ago me made and I can just make the best of the situation. I started out with good old cardboard sheet to get my sides. I copied the lines and angles from the side of the cab and made sure to have a control panel angle that is between 2 and 7 degrees as suggested way earlier in the post.

I then cut it out and taped it to the side of the cab to see if I liked the profile.

Once I liked the cardboard shape I transferred it to 3/4" MDF and rough cut it out with a jigsaw.

Using my router, some double sided tape and a straight piece of scrap wood, I flush trimmed all the straight edges. After I had the straight edges done, I found something round that fit the profile to help make the corners perfect. I double sided taped that to the MDF and used the flush trim bit to follow the curve and make nice clean corners.


Once I had my "master" shape cut out I gave it a quick sanding just to make sure it was right on the money and I was then ready to make copies for the "ribs" of the structure. It's common knowledge that double sided tape is the best way to go about making a copy of a master or a template but I found a great tip online about using double sided tape with masking tape to help with the super stickiness of the double sided tape as well as the residue that it can potentially leave on your wood. So here it is... I took wide masking tape and I put it in the same area on both the piece to be cut as well as the master template piece (wipe your pieces clean of any dust). I then applied the double sided tape on to the masking tape on the piece to be cut. Then I stuck down the master template to the piece to be cut. The double sided tape was then stuck to masking tape on both pieces. This did make getting the pieces apart WAY easier since the tack on the masking tape is much lower than the double sided tape. An added bonus was that sometimes if they came apart well enough you could get two or three uses out of the double sided tape by carefully peeling the masking tape off the one side.
step 1: masking tape on both pieces (roughly in the same place)

step 2: put on the double sided tape and stick both pieces together

step 3: make perfect copies

...more to come...