al heeley Posted October 22, 2007 Report Posted October 22, 2007 Scariest part after routing the neck cavity, for me, is drilling through for the earth wire to earth the bridge to the rest of the hardware & pots. I'm building a p-bass type guitar but there's just not enough angle to drill through from the bridge to the ctrl cavity. The only drill bit I have thats possibly long enough is 6mm wide and thats a big hole for a little earth wire. I really only want a 2 or 3mm hole if poss. Are there any tricks/methods I could use to run a thin channel up so i can wire in the bridge? Quote
Drak Posted October 22, 2007 Report Posted October 22, 2007 Well, I'd have to see a pic of your exact dilemma, but if you don't have access to buying extra long drill bits, you can make your own buy buying a piece of hollow aluminum tubing/piping, and supergluing your shortie drill bit into the end of the aluminum pipe/tube/whatever you call it. I got that trick from Dan Earlewine to make a super long drill bit to drill the claw retainer holes (for a Floyd installation)which have to be at a particular angle that normally takes a very long bit of a precise size to do. I followed his aluminum pipe advice and it worked perfectly. Quote
al heeley Posted October 22, 2007 Author Report Posted October 22, 2007 Well, I'd have to see a pic of your exact dilemma, but if you don't have access to buying extra long drill bits, you can make your own buy buying a piece of hollow aluminum tubing/piping, and supergluing your shortie drill bit into the end of the aluminum pipe/tube/whatever you call it. I got that trick from Dan Earlewine to make a super long drill bit to drill the claw retainer holes (for a Floyd installation)which have to be at a particular angle that normally takes a very long bit of a precise size to do. I followed his aluminum pipe advice and it worked perfectly. Simple but brilliant! But if the drill bit is only just over 2" long and I need to drill though about 4.5", I guess I need to drill the first 2.5" wide enough to accomodate the extension tube diameter so the thinner drill can then make it all the way through....did that make sense?. Quote
Gipper Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 A friend of mine who installs heating duct work showed me a neat trick once. They often have to drill through floor joists for fitting purposes. He used a section of coat hanger. Just cut it to length with a pair of diagonal cutters and chuck it up in the drill. It went through the floor joist quite easily. Now the wood in your guitar is most likely harder than a floor joists, but you can always test it out first. Gipper Quote
al heeley Posted October 24, 2007 Author Report Posted October 24, 2007 buy a longer drill bit? Strangely that did occur to me. The loingest bit I have found (and bought) is about 10 inches long and 6mm wide, too wide and not long enough for my job, hence the post. Drak's contrastingly useful post was great advice, I bought a piece of copper tubing from B&Q and superglued a 3mm wood bit into the end of it, and it worked a treat. Dilemna solved. Quote
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