How to find the centerline?

[DarkPenguin]

Sooo....

This is why one should buy warmoth.  My mighty mite body was unfinished.  I'm brutalizing the finish now.  (Actually I think it might end up the way I envisioned.  But there is a ton of time for me to screw it up.)  It came routed for a tremolo but there are no screw holes.  So I need to drill the 6 screw holes for my fender standard (vintage 62 or something) tremolo.  I have a stewmac template for this.  Its instructions revolve around finding the centerline.

What is the best way to do this that doesn't involve oodles of $$ for a jig?

If I hose the finish I'm just going to wing it.  If the finish comes out perfect I'll pay someone to mount the bridge.

 

[stubhead]

I take it there's no nice little glued line down the middle? Without having it in my hands (no I don't want pictures) the best way is definitely to key off from some of the routes. Not the trem block though, that's off center on purpose. Measuring in from the edges would be dangerous, without at least having some other strat to compare it to. Like, the very center of the neck pocket is on the centerline, as are the pickup routes. The angled pickup doesn't matter, it's still going to be half-above the centerline, and half-below. A set of drawing dividers or even a compass of reasonable quality will help there. Know any quilters? Serious - they have these BIG-ASS transparent "rulers" that are 12" or 18" or more long, but they're also 6" or 12" wide and they're kinda neat diagnostically, IYKWIM.

It wouldn't hurt a bit to pencil in the one you guesstimate on the top, then flip it over and get another one on the back. It'll run from dead-center between the top two neck screw holes, to dead-centered between the sides of the spring cavity, as far down as you can get before the slot. Then run that one down to the butt end of the body. The top one is set by the neck pocket and the third pickup, the back one is set by the neck screw holes and the center of the spring cavity. The neck pocket's the easy one to connect up. Then the centerlines you have on both sides need to be extended down to the butt, strap pin location.

AND - those two centerlines have to meet perfectly. I don't mean, if they don't meet you take an eraser and fudge them around to meet, I mean if they don't meet you have to scratch your head and glower at it a bit - then figure out WHY.

Last checkup before the fur starts flying - if you have the neck, you can seat it in the pocket as best you can, temporarily put on the outside high and low E tuners, and sacrifice a couple of strings to check alignment. And if THAT doesn't match, more glowering and scratching required.