I drilled the holes for the tuner backing plates. It’s a tiny screw size so the pilot hole drill bit actually got stuck. I tracked down a hand drill with a smaller chuck. That was actually easier to deal with and allowed me to back out the drill bit.
As luck would have it, I broke the head of one of the mounting screws in the G string machine head. No matter what I did it was not budging. I just resigned myself that I’d only have three screws in that tuner. I’ve seen old basses with worse, so it’s not the end of the world. Also, the face mounts for the tuners were reeeeeally snug. So that was a job for later.

Timbah First Bass by Tim Gill, on Flickr

Timbah First Bass by Tim Gill, on Flickr

Timbah First Bass by Tim Gill, on Flickr