Headstock drilling

[Cliff Rogers]

G’day, it may have been covered but I am asking again, how do you go about drilling holes for machine heads in your blank headstock.

[fender3x]

All the headstocks I've gotten have holes for the machine heads, but if I had to do it, I'd use a drill press.

[Cliff Rogers]

The GSZ custom kit I got from FrankenWashie is undrilled.
I have to come up with a design and layout.

[matthew]

And decent, proper wood bits.

[McCreed]

If you have any kind of graphics program like Illustrator or Inkscape, you can create a paper template to transfer to the headstock.
Actually you could probably find one online that would fit your needs and just print it out.

Further to what Matthew said, once you have your layout sorted, I use an appropriate sized forstner bit. Make sure to have a scrap piece of timber under the headstock to avoid tear-out when the bit passes through. And be sure both the headstock and scrap piece are well clamped.

Drill press is ideal, drill guide second best, freehand last resort.

[Simon Barden]

Obviously the placement needs to be suitable for the tuners you are using, with them far enough apart so you have easy access to each tuner button, without keep hitting the ones either side. Once you've shaped your headstock, you could simply use one of those flexible bend curve rulers to draw a line that follows the edge of the headstock on each side the correct distance in for the centre of the tuner hole, and space the tuners at equal distance along that line. Just make sure you do this using the correct tuner orientation, with the anti-rotation screw facing the guitar body (if the top nut screw type) and the tuner button on the non-body side.

[Cliff Rogers]

This is the headstock.

[Cliff Rogers]

These are the tuners.


https://www.realparts.com.au/catalog...80/image/7247/

[Fretworn]

A drill press is the way to do it, if you can beg, buy or borrow one.

[McCreed]

I'm sure you could find a template from any one of the 3 x 3 style guitars here:

Electric Herald

They don't need to be a perfect matching style, just use the tuner holes as a reference. I'm confident the spacing on any of them would just fine for those Gotoh's. I have that same tuner model on an LP-style guitar. Standard fit. Nothing out of the ordinary.

If you need help on how to print out the headstock at 1:1 scale, give me hoy and I can explain it (not hard btw).