Filling Switch And Knob Holes

[driesdk]

Hi,

i am on my first guitar project and I am a bit reshaping an old worthless ibanez strat guitar.

I sanded the guitar to the wood and my plan is to stain the guitar, so that the wood will stay visible.

Now, I want to get rid of the 2 holes where the volume and the tone knobs where and the 5-way switch. (I want to have only one pickup, without tone know, and I will drill a new hole for the new volume knob)

Does anyone has an idea how I can fill up the holes? I assume it is allmost impossible to fill the holes and make it look great when I stain the wood, because you will probably notice the places where its filled up very good?

Anyone a solution or an idea on how to mask them, maybe I can lay an inlay above the holes or something?

Thanks, Dries

Edited January 15, 2009 by Rick500

[anderekel]

You have a few choices. You could put an inlay over it, you could just decide it's not worth it and leave it, or you could use a plug cutter and dowel it. You'd want to use a plug cutter so that you don't have endgrain showin' up. And if you're really good you'd be able to match the grain up pretty close and it might be very difficult to see.

[cSuttle]

It's going to show pretty much no matter what you do. A really dark stain will help though. This is want I would do.

1) Buy a head stock plate of the same type of wood.

2) Cut pieces just bigger than the holes and sand them back to the hole size working them until they fit as tight as possible with as little gapping as possible. Try to match the grain pattern of the wood in that area.

3) Glue a thin, flat piece of wood inside the control cavity over the holes as a base to hold the pugs solid. This will stop the pugs from sinking later and messing up your finish.

4) Use a good epoxy to cement them in.

5) Sanding it to the contour and hope for the best.

If you do a good job with this, and use a dark color, it might look pretty good.