Enlarging Floyd bushing holes

[Cederick]

Just checking; would the best way to center the drill on the existing holes be to use a drill press with the same size as the original, and then take it up and then put the new bigger 11mm drill in? Thinking of the Gotoh bushings which are much bigger than probably any other Floyd bushings out there. Getting a free Jackson dinky body soon and dont wanna mess around with the cheap floyd on that one

Most people say you should fill in the holes and find center... I don't know but that just seems like too much work?
If the stud spacing is different I can understand it but not if it's 74mm standard

 

[Cagey]

You really do need to fill the holes before re-drilling them. Otherwise, the bit is going to wander and the hole won't be right, even with a drill press. It's not too much work - you just have to get out and get some dowel rod, cut it to length and glue it in. Ain't no thang.

 

[Cederick]

You really do need to fill the holes before re-drilling them. Otherwise, the bit is going to wander and the hole won't be right, even with a drill press. It's not too much work - you just have to get out and get some dowel rod, cut it to length and glue it in. Ain't no thang.

Really? I don't see why it would "wander" anywhere? ???

 

[Cagey]

Well, I would say "try it and see", but that would be cruel. Listen to the voice of experience. Don't do it. It really isn't difficult to fill the holes and do it right. Bite the bullet so you won't be sorry.

 

[croquet hoop]

Get a piece of wood, drill with a 10 mm bit. Then try to redrill with a 12 mm bit, try to keep it centered, and see what happens.

Look at the end of a wood drill bit. There is a center tip to keep the bit from wandering upon contact and keep it in line. And because the raised lips (the outside corner of the cutting edges) cut the periphery of the hole first, there is nothing to keep it centered before it starts to remove material. It's not like the conical end of a metal bit which can catch the edge of a smaller (pilot) hole and enlarge it. If you want to do it anyway, the bit will tend to slide/wobble, and you're pretty much certain to have an off-centered hole; and probably chipped edges(/finish) around it.

Do the dowel thing. It's simple, and it's just the proper way to do it well. It's not worth trying to save five minutes if you're going to spend three hours later to fix what went wrong.

 

[Cederick]

Okay, thanks for the advice! I was so sure it would work my way :dontknow:

 

[Cagey]

No, you'd be surprised. Drill bits are pretty brittle and because of the wobble you can actually break them trying to do what you're thinking of doing. Then you have the fun of trying to get the broken bit out. Of course, that's worst case. Usually what happens is you don't get the hole you want. It'll be messy or off-center or something.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Could you not start it off with a twist bit?

 

[stubhead]

What, specifically, is wrong with the bushings of a cheap Floyd? I could see how the posts could make a big difference, IF they've got sloppy tolerances, soft cheap potmetal that snaps off when you got stimulated, cut your hand, and because of the horrendous gulag-y Chinese prison camp where the cheap posts are made by demonic slave labor, their bubonic plague experiment drizzed into the potmetal posts, you swell up, turn purple, burst and die.

BUT: it sounds like you want to pull the old bushings just because they're “cheap” - and then replace bushings and posts with less-standardized, oddball size posts? Is there a history of Jackson Dinky Floyd bushing failure? I don't follow them things, but is the original 10mm size the regular Floydian dimensions, meaning there's probably some ultra-zoomy titanium-blessed-by-the-Dolly Llama-super-extrafine posts. But you'd be screwed because you're stuck with the orphan 11mm wierdey Gotoh size...If, as you say, or thought or something, the center-to-center distance is the same – I'd first try the “cheap” ones and as they destroyed themselves, I'd be creepin' for the moonrock ones.

Moons ago, I put a non-locking two-point whammy on my Warmoth flat-seven. Back then they only post-holed for a Floyd-all-the-way, so I had them cut for the springs in back, and did the slot-through and posts myself. I had got some no-name, AllParts seven-string two-point whammy bridge, all steel, solid, nice bridge, 10.4mm post.(?) I only had a 3/8” drill bit and no drill press, so I did that part real carefully. Then 3/8” = 9.525 mm, so I nudged that up to 10.4mm with some 50-grit wet/dry sandpaper and the thinner end of a fairly big rat-tail metal file. If  things are going to go south that way, they'll be doing it very, very slowly.

~ Remain round, remain vertical ~

Actually the ridges were 10.4mm supposedly, the shafts were more like 9mm.

One could pontificate about the relative “inefficiency” of handwork and how tapping into the amazing power zooming, pounding, thrusting and screaming out of those two l'il slots on the wall can greatly increase the production capacity of.. your... mmm... hobby? Samick & Hondo will be quaking in their slippers, go get'm!

 

[Cederick]

Actually I have no idea if the studs fit in the orignal posts. If they did, I would probably keep the bushings. This is in case they don't fit, much work for no real improvement, I guess.

The posts is one other thing tho! Don't wanna ruin a nice bridge by keeping the posts :toothy12:

 

[SustainerPlayer]

I did that once with an old Charvel. And it was both the bushing holes and the neck holes (neck pocket had to be shimmed sideways for a "Fender-fit").

Twist drill for drilling all the way through:

Dowels made from limba:

After plugging:

 

[stubhead]

You cut the plugs out of wood with the grain sideways - that's important for a load-bearing screw like on neck pockets. You still often hear the advice to "fix" a neck screw with toothpicks, or a hardware store dowel. The problem with that is that the entire length of the screw's teeth will be pulling along a single long grain of the dowel and/or toothpicks

 

[bagman67]

Here's your tool for cutting the dowel plugs you need:


http://www.rockler.com/search/go?w=plug%20cutter&asug=&sli_uuid=&sli_sid=


Or:


http://www.woodcraft.com/search2/search.aspx?query=plug%20cutter

 

[Cederick]

Couldn't I just get proper sized wooden sticks in a random hobby store?

That will be much cheaper than those tools

 

[Cagey]

Dowel rod usually doesn't come in small fractional sizes like drill bits do, even from a hobby store, so if you have some odd-sized holes you may have to drill them out to fit the dowel, then drill the new holes using the appropriate-sized bit.

If it was me, and I've done this in the past, I'd open the holes with a twist drill bit so It'll take the standard dowel size. epoxy the little rascals in so they're tighter than dammit, then drill your mounting bushing holes with a Forstner bit so you have a clean hole.

Trick is making sure your hole spacing is right. Most modern bridges are made to fairly exacting standards so if you're off by even just a few thousandths, the damned thing won't mount right. Then you have to invent a whole slew of new cuss words and figure out how to fix what you've done.

 

[Cederick]

But the Gotoh Floyd has one straight knife edge that actually allows for those small misalignments to a little extend. Of course the job should be done as flawless as possible, but the Gotoh design is much more forgiving.

And I tell this by my own experience: I was stupid enough to drill stud holes BY HAND and with badly calculated locations for the busshing holes... And the Gotoh bridge still worked without problem. I could imagine it going bad faster with those imperfect studs, but it hold up for a few days and then I had to sell all stuff because of lack of money.



How do you find the center of a plug??

My original idea was to find center with a drillbit of the same size as original hole, keep the body in the same place, and then put in the new bit and then down again. I could put in the wooden plug without moving the body as well

 

[Cagey]

You're right - some bridges allow for variations in stud placement by widening one of the two pivot points. But, that relies on the fixed point being correct. If that one is off, then the compensating side can't fix it. You're liable to end up with strings that don't center up on the neck. No fun.

To center the thing properly, you need to spend a few bucks on a grease pencil. They let you draw on glass, paint, and other finished surfaces without harming them, and it's fairly easy to clean off. Naphtha or Denatured Alcohol will do it easily without any harm to the finish, no matter what it is. Just drilling the center of the dowel inserts isn't likely to be right.

What you have to do is put a caliper at the nut to check its width, then mark the center point. Then, do the same thing at the heel. Line up a straightedge of some sort - even a yardstick will do - then mark a center point at the bridge. Measure equal points from there, and Bob's your uncle.

 

[stubhead]

T'wouldn't hurt to put four little pieces of masking tape, one on each side of the hole, and mark the exact center points as lines on each side. Foolproof is a state of mind.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

If it was me, and I've done this in the past, I'd open the holes with a twist drill bit so It'll take the standard dowel size

Hang on, so it's OK to go in with a twist bit and make the holes bigger so you can put a dowel in, but not to do exactly the same thing and then put an insert in? Am I missing something here, because I thought this was discouraged right at the start of the thread due do the drill bit jerking around all over the place.

Personally I think widening the existing holes with a twist bit on a press will be fine, and if not then all you've done is got them big enough to take some plugs - but I'm no expert.

 

[Cederick]

You're right - some bridges allow for variations in stud placement by widening one of the two pivot points. But, that relies on the fixed point being correct. If that one is off, then the compensating side can't fix it. You're liable to end up with strings that don't center up on the neck. No fun.

To center the thing properly, you need to spend a few bucks on a grease pencil. They let you draw on glass, paint, and other finished surfaces without harming them, and it's fairly easy to clean off. Naphtha or Denatured Alcohol will do it easily without any harm to the finish, no matter what it is. Just drilling the center of the dowel inserts isn't likely to be right.

What you have to do is put a caliper at the nut to check its width, then mark the center point. Then, do the same thing at the heel. Line up a straightedge of some sort - even a yardstick will do - then mark a center point at the bridge. Measure equal points from there, and Bob's your uncle.

Why is my idea of putting in the drill bit in the hole and then take it out and then inserting the bigger drill bit for drilling a bad one? Im not going to toss around the body between, it will be in the exact same spot and the machine wont move anywhere either, so I dont have to calculate or measure anything