Drilling the Balance Rail Holes
We’ll start by drilling the balance rail holes. If your drill press has a deep enough throat, you can use it to drill all of the holes. If not, you can make a simple hardwood drill guide and use a hand held drill. To make the drill guide, take a short piece of ¾” [19mm] thick hardwood and drill 2 holes all the way through it using your drill press set to 90 degrees. Use the same size bit that you will use to drill the balance rail holes (see below).That’s it! When drilling the 102 holes into your keyblank, push the drill bit through one of the holes in the guide, align the bit with the target on the keyboard blank, rest the guide onto the surface of the keyboard blank, and drill. The guide will keep your drill bit at 90 degrees. When one of the holes in the guide gets worn, switch to the other hole.
From time to time, these pins may be unavailable from the Instrument Workshop. As a substitute, you can use 2" long, 6D stainless steel finishing nails. These are the nails I have used. You will have to cut off the top 5/8" from the head end of the nails and file that end smooth. This is annoying and time consuming, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
