Drill Bit and Dowel Size for Strat Tremolo Bridge?

[arealken]

As you may know, I'm assembling an old beat up Warmoth, and the bridge screwholes are buggered.

Can anyone tell me what size Dowel, and Drill Bit to use for dowel filling and re-drilling the screwholes for a Fender Spec Strat Tremolo bridge?

I was fortunate in the that the two outer holes line up the strings squarely on the neck, though they also need filling, so I'll dowel all the holes in between first.

 

[Cagey]

The size of dowel you need depends on how tore up the holes are. I would expect a 3/16" dowel would work out ok.

The screw holes for the bridge screws need to be piloted at 7/64". The trick is going to be:

A. Getting all 6 holes aligned in a perfectly straight line, and
B. Making sure all 6 holes are perfectly perpendicular to the body top.

In other words, you seriously need a drill press. You can't do this by hand with a portable drill motor. At least, not and expect the bridge to be anywhere near usable. Trying to this by hand is begging for failure. It's not a good design because of that 6 screw lineup, particularly since we're dealing with wood here, not metal. You'll have repeatability and return-to-neutral problems that you won't be able to resolve, and you'll be tuning the thing 528 times a session trying to keep it somewhere near useful.

Assuming you have a drill press, drill the two outside holes first. That'll give you half a chance at getting the middle 4 somewhere near where they need to be.

If it was me, I'd consider getting one of the Scartozi hardtails designed to replace that bridge. Doug still makes 'em. Barring that, I'd plot out where to drill a couple holes for bushings for a Wilkinson or similar two-point fulcrum vibrato bridge and get away from that 6 hole silliness altogether. You might end up having to route the string anchor block cavity a bit for clearance, but that's easy enough to do and not very risky since it's mostly hidden.

Good luck!