Tritium Fretboard Dot

This is a simple hack to add a little light to your fretboard. There are vendors that sell similar kits with what looks to be glow in the dark phosphorus plastic. They look good too, but my friend happens to work in wholesale beads and jewelry parts, so he had a bunch of these 6x2mm tritium capsules. The advantage of using these is you don't have to charge them up with external light, they're radioactive! Always on. And you can get them in three or four different colors.

I chose to use one dot, because I only had three and I didn't want to make cheese out of my favorite guitar. The seventh fret is most important to me in the dark, because it's fairly easy to muscle memory up and down the octaves from there.

6mm x 2mm Tritium capsule from https://www.beadkraft.com/
Drill
1/16" or 2mm drill bit
Tape
Guitar

Ready? The first step is the hardest. A. because you are about to drill your sweet guitar. B. because you need a steady hand and eye. You may want to practice on some wood stock first.

If you're feeling confident, simply fasten your bit and measure and mark about 6mm from the end of the bit with tape. This will give you a guide to make sure you don't drill too deep.

Use saftey glasses as always. Begin your hole directly into the the existing dot on the top of the fretboard. On a Stratocaster, the dots are slightly bigger than the capsule, so you shouldn't hit the wood at all.

Make sure to keep an even, level angle directly into the side of the dot. Becareful of drill-walk and begin drilling very slowly. Take your time and you should get two even twists of plastic ejected from the drill hole. Reverse the drill and back out carefully. Drill only to the edge of the tape on the bit. You might not get a second chance to drill deeper so you should check the depth of the hole with a pin or something, otherwise your capsule could go too deep or not deep enough. This is important because you don't want the capsule to stick out and possibly break in the fretboard.

If you're happy with the drilling, you can go ahead and insert the capsule into the hole. It should slide in snug and flush with the edge of the fretboard. Its so snug in fact that you really don't need glue or anything. Be super careful not to force it. You can revisit the hole with the drill, but it will be difficult to pull the capsule out, so make sure you get it right before you insert the capsule all the way in. Again, please be very careful not to break the capsule, its glass and radioactive hydrogen isotopes, so be safe and don't force it. If all slides in smoothly, you might feel a little bump as the very last bit of the capsule might be tangible on the previously sanded fretboard. Of course this is craft work, so variations apply.

If all went well, you should be pretty much done. This is a push fit solution, so just the friction and tension will keep the capsule from falling out of the fretboard. If you know how to handle glue like cyano-acrylite (krazy glue), you could apply a drop and let it dry (do not touch). But personally I've been playing with it for a week and its in there nice and snug and feels great. The little bump actually makes a good tactile reference too. Its great so far and you can hardly tell the guitar has been modified because the dot blends in almost perfectly under normal light. And with lights out of course, it does the trick. If you decide to try this, I hope you have the same success. I think the half-life of Tritium is like 12 years, so you should get at least as many years of light out of the capsule I guess. In terms of Radioactive hazzard, please comment if you are a doctor or physicist and have any concerns. This of course comes with no warranty. Good luck and happy hacking. 👍🏽💪🏾😎🔥