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So I've decided to go with abalone face dots, and plain white side dots. I think that will work nicely with the retro theme I'm going for here. First I need to lay out the dot locations. I keep saying I'll make a jig for this because it really looks bad when dots don't line up. Some day I'll get to it. In the mean time, I do it the low tech way.

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With an angled headstock, you need something to raise the neck a little so you can get under the drill bit without running into the edge of the table on the drill press. Half of an ash body blank does the trick. A brad point bit is the key to success here. A regular bit will wander.

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Once all the holes are drilled, its time to glue the face dots in. Here are all the tools needed.

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Here I've masked around the hole to try to cut down on the glue that may make its way onto the fretboard. The fretboard still needs some sanding, and the dots also need a little polish, but I hate sanding excess CA out! I'll just lift the masking tape as one piece and move it to the next dot and so on.

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Here are the finished face dots. They'll look a lot nicer when the board is sanded and they get polished up in the process.

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Now its on to side dots. This pic is a little blurry, but I kept it to show that I chucked the drill bit way up in the drill press to keep it from wandering. I normally install matching side dots and I have the correct brad point bit for those. To keep with the old-school retro theme, I'm going with plain white side dots which come in a different size, and I don't have the correct size brad point for those.

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The white plastic dot material comes in small rods. I normally clip them off with a pair of wire cutters, but today I used my son's pliers. He's 6 and he loves it when Dad 'borrows' tools from his tool box :) Once I've done all the side dots, I'll put the neck aside for a while and start on the body.

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