I'll probably be trying out the rasp more in the future. I have one, I'm just not good with it yet. By contrast, the angle grinder was REALLY easy to get used to.
I read Setch's tutorial about 3 times, as well as Eric Hauri's well-documented tutorial of his GBO V8, watching Perry's videos, and re-reading Hyssock's chapter on carving. Honestly, I was as prepared as I could be to do it. After practicing on the pine I was very confident, and I'm fairly pleased with the end result. The issue was with the router blowout.
I think in the future, I'll NOT try to rout the ends of the horns. I'll use the drill press planes someone turned me on to. It might not be as smooth or quick on operation, but if it eliminated the possibility of this continuing to happen, it's well worth it.
I can see how trying to do the binding routing at this point would be difficult at best. I'll chalk this up to a rookie mistake in the order of operations. With all the heming & hawing I've been doing about trying the binding, I guess I was needing an experienced guy to tell me not to do it. Thanks.
Overall, I think it may be time to stop with this body. There's a point when you're just making things worse if you keep tinkering with it, and I think I'm there. I know there's a way around the mistakes I've made, I just don't have the skill or knowledge to do it right now. I believe my plan now is to do the final prep sanding (smoothing the sides, carve, and eliminaring the burns) and make the control cavity cover from some thin mahogany.