Drilling a peghead with pearloid?

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Howdy folks! I'd like to replace the pegs on an old banjo-uke of mine. It's from the late 20s or 30s by my estimation and the pegs are in rough shape and difficult to adjust. To do this I will have to drill out the peg holes and my only concern is that the headstock has a pearloid overlay. Will this cause me any problems?
 
Welcome to UU. I would ream the holes out manually rather than drill them out. Go slow and see how the pearloid reacts. How much do you need to take out?
 
The Grover 85B's I'm thinking of require an 11/32 hole. The current holes seem to be about 7/32.
 
I just checked the diameters of the Gotoh tuner shafts against the
7/32" tuner holes you have. You would have to do a little more hole widening with these than I had thought when I posted above. 7/32" is about 0.219" and the Gotoh tuners have stepped tuner shafts with 2 diameters, 6.1mm and 9.5mm. 6.1mm is about 0.240" and 9.5mm is about 0.374".

Maybe the Gotohs aren't the best recommendation.

Waverly makes some nice friction tuners that would work on your instrument without substantial mods:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tuners/...ab=Specs&_suid=137615732043408334564392333998

The tuner shaft diameter on those is only 0.160". On those, you would have to slightly taper the top and bottom of the headstock to install.
 
If you do drill I would clamp a piece of wood on the face and drill from the back . I would make sure the drill bit goes into theclamped
piece of wood a quarter of an inch. That should give you a clean cut and use a high speed drill and new bit .
 
Thanks for the input, everyone. Those planetary tuners would be lovely, though I'm not sure this particular banjo uke is worthy of such an upgrade... Here's what I'm working with:
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Also, I'd be particularly interested if anyone had an idea as to the identity of this little guy. I've had it for eight years and have yet to see another exactly like it. The closest I've come was a Kay model from the 30s.
 
Have you considered a geared tuner that is lighter than any of the others, yet looks like an original wooden peg tuner? They are called PEGHEDS. www.pegheds.net Thursday evening I sat next to a Kamaka with the new Gotoh tuners. I thought they look out of place because of their large size sticking out the back. They seemed to overpower the simple look of the rest of the ukulel.
 
Have you considered a geared tuner that is lighter than any of the others, yet looks like an original wooden peg tuner? They are called PEGHEDS. www.pegheds.net Thursday evening I sat next to a Kamaka with the new Gotoh tuners. I thought they look out of place because of their large size sticking out the back. They seemed to overpower the simple look of the rest of the ukulel.

I really like pegheds, but I don't have any experience installing them and from what I've read they can be tricky. And then there's the matter if reaming a tapered hole...

Is the primary concern with drilling the risk of splintering?
 
An update: I took the plunge and drilled it out using a sharp new bit. Drilling into another block of wood helped prevent any splintering. The pearloid didn't create any problems.
Before:
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After:
image.jpg
 
Also, I'd still be extremely grateful if someone could help identify this banjo-uke.
 
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