Golden Age slotted head tuner bushings

I have started to add 12 vintage style bushings to the Stewmac Golden Age slotted head tuners. It works great and have a couple of advantages. The tuners turn a bit smoother with metal-on-metal. There is no risk that the string will cut into the wood at the ends of the tuner posts. Some old guitar have original tuner that are longer than the Golden Age ones, the added mm from the bushing is often all that is needed. It looks great too :-)

I have my theory that firm anchoring of the string ends increases the volume. I have already addressed the problem at the ball end of the string, this is the other end and metal-on-metal is firmer than metal-on-wood. It may be a coincidence, but my latest two "OldGuitars" is some of the loudest ones I've ever restored. I think the bushings adds a little bit more volume.

I buy these vintage style bushings cheap in bags of 25 pieces, good for two guitars. It's important to clean them from grease with for example methylated spirit, otherwise the fish glue won't stick. Fish glue is the best glue for this, a great glue when you glue metal or pearl on wood.

The bushings will probably be too wide for some of the 6 bushing in the middle . I tried a couple of methods and the best one was threading the bushing on a conical end of a round wood bar.

I use the wonderful Stewmac drill jig for slotted heads. The hole must be larger for the bushing though, I use a cheaper jig for flat heads drilled out to 7.2 mm to make the hole bigger for the bushings.

To glue the bushings I put a loosely matched round dovel through the outer hole and through the bushing. It's easy to add glue to the bushing with it hanging on the dovel and easy to push it in place.

This is the end result before adding the screws to the tuners. The guitar is a harp guitar made in Sweden 1922 :-)

Here are some slides of the glueing and mounting on another guitar. Fish glue in a ketchup bottle.