Building my first stitch and glue kit, I will have to copy the deck plates onto new sheets of plywood, to enable me to make a narrower cockpit hole than planned for in kit.

Having at hand the deckplates delivered with the kit, what will be the easiest way to have perfect copies? I had been thinking of drawing, using the kit plates as templates, then sawing a bit outside of the line and then trimming the edges to the lines using a block plane.

But I recall someone who did use plates as templates when using a router to do this job faster (no drawing). What will the result be if following such a procedure? As exact as if using the plane? Better? Worse?

If I am to buy a router, what router should I buy? What router bits to do the copy work? If buying a router, it will later be used to make bead and cove strips, so this should be in mind when choosing type of router.

Jan Gunnar