Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richey Kay on April 24, 2014 at 10:08am

Damn dude. Think I saw one in Wilko the other day for 99p. Or was it a 7mm... :-P

Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on April 24, 2014 at 5:33pm

These bushings are a lot more substantial than the usual Chinese 'monkey metal' ones. I usually drill them undersize and take them out to final diameter with a reamer, but you should find that a 9mm bit will give you a good tight fit.

Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 24, 2014 at 10:31pm

 Headstock is a slotted one with 8mm holes for normal sized bushes so no way to get a reamer in , I don't have a reamer so to go and spend £20 to £30 on extra tools to fit a set of £6.00 machineheads if I'd known the size of the bushes I wouldn't have bought them , perhaps you should put the sizes on your web page .

Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on April 25, 2014 at 12:37am

If you have any old imperial size drills a 23/64" would give a hole just over 9mm

Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 25, 2014 at 1:23am

 No I don't have any , haven't used imperial since 1968 , i'll have to sling these and buy a set with the right size bushes

Permalink Reply by Michael Fred Johnson on April 25, 2014 at 10:23pm

You must know an old fart (like me) with a shed load of gear he won't part with 'cos some day it will come in handy 

Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 25, 2014 at 11:00pm

 I'm the same  i spent most of my working life in the building trade , picking up screws , nails , bits of gash timber all stored for future use .,

 The thing that winds me up is all I have to do for this build is fit the tuners and string it and it's finished ,  but now I have to re-think this build , holes for tuners will have to be plugged with dowling and re-drilled to 6mm and use them without bushes , don't have a dedicated drill press so it'll be a nightmare to get the re-drilling centre and straight , or buy new machine heads but the only option on Ebay is Chinese ones but at least they'll come with the right sized bushes , Rant over ...

Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on April 25, 2014 at 11:41pm

You can curse the supplier for perhaps leaving a specification unpublished,
Or you can curse yourself for taking something for granted. I think most of us who've been doing this a while have made the mistake of cutting incorrectly for some part that was not yet on the bench. I personally never bother with push in bushings in slotted heads, because you'd need to drill right through from the opposite side they're only going to loosen things up as I see it :)

Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 26, 2014 at 1:10am

 Thanks Kid from over the pond , a bit of both I think , I was building  full size guitars long before in came upon this site so I did take it for granted that they'd come with 8mm bushes , I've never seen a bush that size only 8mm and I think there's 3 sizes of 10mm , any way time to crack open a cold one and sort in Monday .

Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on April 28, 2014 at 7:27am

With a slotted headstock, bushes aren't usually used, you just drill the for the diameter of the tuner string post and that's it. I've never actually seen a slotted headstock guitar built using bushings...although I recall trying to do it once and realised that it was a really bad idea. I think some old Martins slotheads and the DuPont  Selmer style guitars use bushings, but it's not a common way of doing it.

If you need "regular" sized bushings, let me know and I'll send some free of charge.

Permalink Reply by The Capo Kid on April 28, 2014 at 9:09am

 Thanks John if you've 8mm bushes that would be great as I've already drilled the post holes at 8mm  .