Stringing A TMB Correctly

I just finished this new Tennessee music box for one of themembers here, and was fighting with the attachment of the string ends to the scew eye tuners. I've always just used whatever method I could to geta string fastened tightly toits screw eye, but haven't come up with an effective way that I can use for consistent results.

I thought about driling a tiny hole in one "side" of the screw eye loop, but I'm sure that wouldn't be historically accurate. Any thoughts about this, or does anybody KNOW how they used to do it?