Martin fretboard dots

[Fritz Froeschner]

anyone want to give me some pointers .... how do you cut the holes and install fretboard markers, dots, in a new fretboard? ... a brad point bit in a drill press is what I was thinking about...I can do all the locating and depth control alright... just wondering about what kind of cutting tool to use for making the holes. Also, what are the sizes of the dots on a 70's D 18? They seem to be 5, 6 and 7 mm ... but the middle one looks more like 1/4" 6.35mm ... I can get a 5,6 and 7mm drill bit but not 6.35mm bit... any words of wisdom / experience will be greatly appreciated... and Thank you for this great Forum.
Fritz

[Russell Vance]

Yep, a brad point will do it (better to use a Forstener but these ar hard to come by in small sizes) but be careful - brad points, the tip of the drill, are sometimes roughly cut and will skew off centre if you do not use a very small pilot hole/centre punch divot or clamp the board tightly and accurately. Most of my colleagues don't worry about it but if you sight down the line of dots you can often pick up the inaccuracies where the drill has wiggled around a bit. Buy a 1/4 inch bit from a machine shop supplies place - if you are from metric country the hardware shop often has imperial sizes (inches) side by side with the metric drills. For the record, odd sized dots can be made by chucking plastic rod (available from plastic supplies shops) into a drill press and hand turning it to size with a file held against the protruding rod - cut it off with a fret saw while still in the chuck so you can get skinny, squared up, slices of round plastic - finish the end with an emery board before you cut it off and that gives you one smooth side to work with when installing. I f this job was easy everyone would be doing it.

[Fritz Froeschner]

thank you Russ.. yeah I know what you mean about sighting down the neck... don't like when things start looking a little out of line.. fret ends and such... seems like a stubby / short bit would be good to have for this job.. thanks for the dot tip..

[Frank Ford]

Martin dots have traditionally been inch fractional sizes, not metric.

Here's the install technique I use:

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Technique/Structural/InlayD...

[Fritz Froeschner]

>>
Thank you Frank... that's what I was thinking..I'm sure Martin wasn't using metric sizes in 1970.. I had seen your instructions on the side marker install before but I hadn't seen the rest of it.. thank you for posting that... anyway, I'm replacing the fretboard and was trying to match up the ones in the old fretboard with the Stew Mac ones in their catalog.. on the old fretboard , seems like the largest marker (5th fret) measures 9/32, Stew mac has 7mm 17/64.. that's close... I guess I'm nit-pikin at this point but I did want to keep things "right" on this guitar. The next ones look like 1/4" ..no problem there.. the smallest ones look like 6/32", I guess I'll use the StewMac 5mm 13/64" ..... geeezzz, like Russ says... if it was easy...
anyway thank you guys so much for you comments...