To get the pattern to the wood , the easiest is to photocopy it and attach with spray glue. There are many brands on the market to chose from. Practice with the brand you use will teach you how much to use and how long to let it dry before applying the pattern to the wood. If you cannot get the pattern off the wood after cutting, try heating it with a heat gun, or spraying it with paint thinner or laquer thinner. If the patterns fall off the wood before you are done, you probably let the glue dry too long. All of the sprays seem to work differently, so practice is the secret to success. The patterns could also be traced and transferred with graphite paper, but this method is very time consuming on complex patterns.
A new idea of placing clear packing tape over the wood and pattern, will help keep the edges of the cut from burning. You may even notice the blade seems to cut easier and lasts longer. It has not be proven, but is presumed that the glue in the tape actually lubricates the cut. No matter what the reason is, the fact is that it does help eliminate the burning of the edges of the wood. Some prefer to place the tape on the wood, then apply the pattern to the tape. Others prefer to apply the pattern to the wood, then tape over the pattern. I prefer the tape over the pattern, as I find the spray adhesive held pattern is easier to remove from the wood than the tape.
The paper pattern need to be lined up with the wood grain that you have decided to use for the best color.
The spray drawer is used to keep from getting over spray on the surrounding are. The drawer is simply a shallow drawer with hardware wire mounted about 1" off the bottom of the drawer.
Now with the pattern applied , it is time to drill the holes. No, the wood does not come predrilled. If you are using a saw that has the pin end blades, larger holes are needed to get the pin through. The pin end blade are normally larger blades too, so they do not do as well on fine detail. The pin can be driven out of the top of the blade and replaced with a safety pin, to help thread them into smaller holes. The plain end blades can be fed through a lot smaller hole, and come in smaller sizes, making them able to do finer detail in fretwork.
The clear packing tape placed over the pattern and wood does two things. It helps to hold the pattern to the wood, but it's main purpose is to lubricate the blade in the hardwoods, to keep the edge of the cut from burning.
The type of blade you use will have a lot of bearing on the hole size. With the # 2 blade we can easy use a 1/16" blade. With a pin end blade a 5/32" hole is needed, and by removing the pin we can go down to a 7/64" hole. But some areas of even this large fretwork may not have room for the 7/64" hole in the space to be removed.