Drilling Out the Holes

This page is all about drilling the necessary holes in the body of the guitar. I don't have any pictures of lining everything up or of the actual drilling, but I do have results! First off, I used a chalk string to create a straight line from the nut to the bottom of the body (It's the blue in the first picture). Once I had that, I could line up where the bridge was going to go. For the pick guard, holes, I used the prototype of the guard I'm going to use to ensure that the holes were placed properly, and for the strap buttons, I used my center line and/or winged it. When I bought the body, I decided not to have a tremolo bridge, which would have required a huge rout through the body, as well as one in the back. I like how this looks much better than a big plastic plate on the back covering an ugly bridge. Without that though, I needed to drill holes all the way through the body, and add a little space for the wood protectors (different types of washers) I'm using to protect the wood from the strings. To drill everything except the recesses in the back, I used a drill press, and I strongly encourage you to do the same. You'll see the difference it makes.

	So here is a view of the body with all of the holes done. There's not much else to say.
	This is a close up of the bridge holes. The large recesses around the holes will be holding brass washers to prevent the strings from eating away at the wood. The lines are my horizontal and vertical rules that I made using the chalk string. I lined everything up with them the best I could so that the bridge would be in line with the nut.
	Here are the recesses on the back of the guitar. I did them with an electric drill, so they aren't nearly as neat, and the two on the right intersect a little. This doesn't matter too much, because they will be stained and occupied by brass/galvanized steel washers to protect the wood from the string balls.
	This is a larger view of the back, and you can see that the sloppiness of the recesses is much less conspicuous.
	Here I have the body clamped so I can drill the hole of the top strap button...
	...Which you can see here. I did these holes with the electric drill as well, though they were much easier.
	Here's the bottom hole for the strap button, lined up with the center line. I don't really have a preference for placement, but since my other guitars' buttons are dead center, I figured I should stick with that.

Click Here to go back to the page about sanding off the epoxy, here to view the page about staining the body, or