Acoustic bass guitar bridge pin hole size - help please!

[TrevorMag]

I'm building an acoustic bass guitar, and I'm in a conundrum on the bridge.
When the holes were 7mm, the string ball ends couldn't be forced down the holes.
So I drilled them out to 7.5mm, and now the bridge pins are loose.
And no, the ball ends are not stuck on the ends of the pins, they're folded out nicely.
I started off with a 5 degree reamer, but it was pretty pointless as you've got to get the ball ends through the narrowest part, and the widest part is only 8mm.

[Mark McLean]

I am a bit uncertain what problem you are trying to solve. If the problem is that you have slightly over-reamed the holes and one or more pins are too loose then you can fix that by partly refilling the hole and then re-reaming it. Smear some CA glue around the edges of the hole(s) that are too large - using a cotton bud (q-tip) - and then dust the hole with some sawdust made from your bridge timber. Or you can take a plane shaving and glue that in. It will probably then be too small, but you can ream it back out to the desired size.

However, it sounds like you need big holes to be able to get the string balls through. You might be better off to use bigger pins.

[johnparchem]

Yes, get some oversized pins.

[TrevorMag]

Thanks Mark & John. The pins I was using are white ones off ebay, from China. They've got a standard taper. In order to progress the setup I wrapped some masking tape around them (cut at the slots).
I've just ordered as set from Australian Luthier Supplies - black ones with far less of a taper. Hopefully that'll fix things so I don't have dabble with CA & sawdust.

[kiwigeo]

Might be a good idea to set up a mock up bridge (piece of wood same thickness of bridge+top+bridge patch) and do a test run with drill and reamer to see how things all fit before attacking the actual bridge again.