First refret job

[jwendt2003]

I've done a couple levelings so far, this was my first attempt at a refret. The fret ends are not angled enough, I just did it by hand with a long file and eyeballed it. I used the fret pullers to radius (bend) the new frets; not easy to get it smooth. Some of the frets don't sit perfectly against the board, but that's why I tried it on a Squire first!

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/...1&uid=12593288

[jrfrond]

No, fret jobs take practice to get right. DId you prep sand the fingerboard first. If you don't have nice, sharp corners where the radius meets the side of the fingerboard, the frets won't lay flat. AFTER the fret job is finished, you can then roll the fingerboard edges again. In addition, frets need to be over-radiused slightly. You can't tap a fret home if it is too flat. It will spring right back. There's also an acquired technique with tapping in the frets.

But hey, you got past your first one. Congratulations!

[David Schwab]

Three tools that I would not do fret jobs without are the fret bender

FretBender at Stewart-MacDonald

Fret Tang Nipper at Stewart-MacDonald

Fret Beveling File at Stewart-MacDonald

You can make your own, but these three things have saved me so much time that they paid for themselves in no time.

I have many more specialty fret tools too, like the 6" fret leveler ( Fret/Fingerboard Leveling Files at Stewart-MacDonald ) and lately I have been using an arbor press with these: Fret Press Caul at Stewart-MacDonald

[jrfrond]

Originally Posted by David Schwab

Three tools that I would not do fret jobs without are the fret bender

FretBender at Stewart-MacDonald

Fret Tang Nipper at Stewart-MacDonald

Fret Beveling File at Stewart-MacDonald

You can make your own, but these three things have saved me so much time that they paid for themselves in no time.

I have many more specialty fret tools too, like the 6" fret leveler ( Fret/Fingerboard Leveling Files at Stewart-MacDonald ) and lately I have been using an arbor press with these: Fret Press Caul at Stewart-MacDonald

Yes Dave, you are right, and I have all three! The FretBender is a friggin' Godsend for radiusing fretwire, as are the Fret Bending Pliers and the Tang Nipper to overlay frets over binding.

Sure, I did it by hand in the old days, but we have TOOLS now!

BTW- I bought the Fret Press a LONG time ago. Once you press frets in, a hammer seems barbaric!

[jwendt2003]

Thanks for the input! Yes, I over-radiused the frets with just the clippers before hammering. I didn't even think about sanding to keep a sharp edge on the fret board first, and then later rounding off the edge between each fret. I'll check into those other tools; gotta save up a little though ...Jim

[Soapbarstrat]

I don't like "bevel files" such as the Stewmac one with the file fixed at 35 degrees. On tall frets that can often be too much of a bevel. Prefer to do it free hand with a file, so I can start the bevel half way up the crown height and have any degree of bevel I see fit.

The StewMac fret-bender has the best adjustment method of any of the benders on the market, as far as I know. You'll find other similar looking benders for sale from other sources, but they all seem to just have a elongated hole for the adjustable roller, which is a PITA to fine tune. The Stewmac bender has a more complex mechanism for the adjustable roller, and it's much easier to fine tune.
But even so, $90, or whatever they're going for these days, is quite a chunk of change if you don't care that much how easy the tool is to adjust.

Although I haven't had my hands on any currently made stewmac bender. Mine was made in the late 80's. Brass roller with two grooves. Maybe it's a classic !

[Bruce Johnson]

I have one of the old Waverly/Stew-Mac fretwire rollers from the early '90's. It's a great tool that has paid for itself in time savings many times over.

I work with a lot of different fingerboard radiuses, from flat down to under 4". Although my machine has the eccentric roller adjustment, it's still a little bit of a pain to get it dialed in to any particular radius. Also, it won't adjust to tighter than about 6".

What I did was machine up a series of aluminum sleeves on the lathe, which slip over the idler roller. These sleeves have different outside diameters, which result in different rolling radiuses. That way, I can leave the adjustment locked, and swap sleeves in a second to change rolling radiuses.

[David Schwab]

That's a good idea Bruce!

I also have the old fretbender unit, back when they made it out of steel... with the brass rollers. I usually try and set it for slightly more radius than the neck, but it is a try-a-piece-and-see method. It would be nice to have presets.

I got the arbor press and stuff back in the 90's, but it was in storage for a long while. So I had been using a hammer again.

[Soapbarstrat]

When I said the stew bender adjusts easier, I meant when you loosen the roller to adjust it, it stays in position until you move it, whereas the slot version just slides right out of your adjustment.

I made a straightening machine for several reason, one for when I accidentally over-radius the wire.

I was considering approaching stewmac with my wire straightening design, but found out their policy with other people's designs is :

" The person gets their name mentioned in our catalog and a clean working version of their design".

Seems a little unbalanced, considering Stewmac makes a steady income from the persons design.

I thought about putting marks on the bender to show me where to adjust for specific radii, but then when you factor in different crown sizes, changing the adjustment amount, you'd end up with marks similar to 1/64" increments on a ruler. Not easy on the eyes.

[jwendt2003]

Does anyone file the 'fall away' area (above the 17th fret)? Is that the norm?

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by jwendt2003

Does anyone file the 'fall away' area (above the 17th fret)? Is that the norm?

I usually do. I take it on a case by case basis, but generally I put some "fall away" up there. Especially with bolt on necks.

[Bruce Johnson]

Like David, I did the arbor press thing for a while in the '90's. I made up a nice head assembly that mounted to one of my arbor presses, with machined Delrin radiused foot blocks that snapped in and out. I used it for a year or two, but I found that it was significantly slower than a good 'ol hammer, and I couldn't see any real advantages. I still have the whole rig, and I use it once in a while for special applications. It's one of those tools that looks appealing when you're starting out at fretwork, but once you've worked out your own hammer technique, it isn't really necessary.

I mostly use an 8 oz ball peen hammer and a plastic block. My plastic block is a piece of UHMW polyurethane about 3/8" thick x 1" tall x 6" long. The edges are slightly rounded off so it won't mark the fingerboard if it touches. I've probably driven a thousand frets with that same plastic block.

[jwendt2003]

I had to rework a few things;a couple high spots and the fall away area, but it's playing ok now. I can never get close to 1/4" clearance for the higher strings without buzzing, I seem to end up around 5/64" - 6/64". And is it me, or does a refret improve the overall tone? I thought it would just play better and reduce the buzz spots, but the ceramic PUs sound pretty good now. The Affinity Squires are listed as having Alder bodys, which I didn't know, so what's the diff between those and a MIM? Anyways, I finally got some wire in, so I'm off to winding some replacement PUs for the fun of it. If only I could see it...

[Soapbarstrat]

Most of the replacement fret-wire you buy is better quality than the factory wire on cheap guitars. This can probably improve tone. I think of most factory fret-wire as just something there to keep dust out of the fret slots until I do my thing with new frets.

Gluing in the frets might improve tone. Depends on the glue. In my early days, I used 5 minute epoxy for a short period. When I saw it was like a hard rubber when dry, I quit using it. Switched to long dry. Now it's only super-glue with the wood already treated with accelerator. I like a very hard brittle glue for tone.

[guitician]

Originally Posted by Soapbarstrat

I like a very hard brittle glue for tone.

That's ok for wood to wood gluing, but for metal to wood, hard/brittle wouldn't move with the expansion/contraction differences.

[David Schwab]

I also use CA for gluing in frets. That's pretty much standard practice for many luthiers. Many epoxies dry very hard too.

I find the 5-minute epoxy doesn't have enough open time to fret a whole neck, and often dries too flexible.

The glue just helps getting tight ends. You really want good a mechanical fit to hold the frets in.

As far as the glue helping the tone... I doubt it. It's not enough glue mass compared to the frets/neck. It's too thin to matter. Unless you have an overly wide slow and the fret is loose, and being held in by glue. You don't want that!

It's like the whole debate on whether finish changes the tone of a solid body. I'd say no, but lack of finish allows moisture into the wood and that changes the tone.

The frets on Parker guitars are glued on. They don't have tangs or slots.

[guitician]

That's interesting about Parkers fret's just being glued to the surface. The service Dept. must have some special jigs and procedures to do a re-fret.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by guitician

That's interesting about Parkers fret's just being glued to the surface. The service Dept. must have some special jigs and procedures to do a re-fret.

I saw Ken Parker give a talk on the guitar back in '95, and he said that when they want to do a refret, they take a chisel and whack the frets off, sand the fingerboard smooth, and glue on a new one!

The fingerboard is a thin layer of carbon fiber glued to a thin layer of fiberglass. It has the radius built in. The top surface of the neck also has the radius milled into it. The neck is made from basswood!

[Bruce Johnson]

Ken Parker's technique for fretting was (and still is!) way ahead of its time. The key thing was that he used round wire (there's no tang) of some very hard stainless alloy. It's hardness is in the range of piano wire or spring wire. I don't think it was possible to wear grooves in them. They were permanent frets. The only reason for a refret was to correct some overall neck issue.

If I remember right, they CNC cut small rounded grooves across the fingerboard to locate the frets. Then they rolled the wire to a slightly tighter radius and cut off pieces. A fine bead of glue went in each groove, the wires were placed, and the whole neck was clamped in a precision caul. After drying, the ends of the wires were ground off with abrasive disks. There was no leveling, crowning, or finish polishing involved. Once they got the precision of the CNC cutting worked out, it was actually a very fast, efficient operation. It was revolutionary, and this was back in the '80's, when most guitar companies had never heard of CNC.

Ken Parker is a brilliant engineer and innovator. So many aspects of his original Fly guitars are still decades ahead of anyone else. The sad part is that, after building and selling 30,000 Fly guitars, he never broke even financially and covered his original investment. It's a very sobering reminder to anyone who thinks that they are going to take the world by storm with a brilliant new guitar idea.

[David Schwab]

It's been a while, but the way I remember it is the frets are actually flat on the bottom, and pre curved. They used a template with slots in it to locate the position of each fret. The frets just sit on the surface of the fingerboard with no notches at all.

At the lecture, he had a fingerboard that we were able to handle. It's precurved also, but as you would expect, you can bend it a bit. The truss rod was a piece of music wire! He had a whole bunch of the bent spring steel of trem "springs" that people were taking with them. I had one for a while and then lost it.

This was at the '95 A.S.I.A Symposium in PA. I got to hang out and talk to Ken for about an hour. Very cool guy.

[Soapbarstrat]

There is another guy who uses totally round stainless rods for frets. 'TK Instruments' or something like that ?

[guitician]

Couldn't they cut a "C" shaped channel and drive the stainless wire into the fingerboard from the side. Like Fender used to do with tang'd frets.

[Soapbarstrat]

I guess they'd have to if the strong glues of today were not available.
There's a good reason Fender gave up on sideways fretting long ago.

Haha, once on a forum, someone brought up the sideways fretting and as a joke I said " yeah, they'd load cut frets into a nail gun and shoot 'em into the neck from the side " . I think the guy believed me !

[guitician]

What problems did Fender have with side installing frets? I would think round wire into a "C" channel would work with today's precision machines. A carbide ball burr on a CNC router with a rotatory table.Something like a nail gun could work to, controlled by precision position CNC.

[Soapbarstrat]

I'm not going to speculate about all the problems I can imagine during production, but I know with the end result, those necks often had pretty damn uneven frets (some of the crowns would mash down into the fret-board surface more than others). Too much emphasis on making the frets well secure at the expense of playability. To me, if you have to go heavy handed with the mill file or put 120 grit abrasive on your leveling block, you're dealing with a poorly done fret-job.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by guitician

I would think round wire into a "C" channel would work with today's precision machines. A carbide ball burr on a CNC router with a rotatory table.Something like a nail gun could work to, controlled by precision position CNC.

And what's going to hold the frets to the fingerboard?

Cutting too large/deep a slot will also make the fingerboard/neck weak.

The usual way works just fine.

[jrfrond]

The old Fender sideways method was flawed. The depth of the fret was entirely operator-dependent. When you hammer or press-in frets, you have a visual reference for when it is seated on the fingerboard. With the Fender system, the fret's ground-in knife-edge was placed against the slot, held by the pressure block, then the operator stepped on a treadle which activated a cable to pull the fret in. If it was a little too high or low, there was nothing you could do and there was no visual reference for where the fret would land. I've seen CBS Fender's with fret height all OVER the place. They HAD to level them coming out of the factory.

I, for one, am glad that Fender dumped the process after the CBS era. Like many here, I also defretted those necks sideways. The maple ones were a really pain because of the thick poly up against the frets and the subsequent sanding and prep required. Gotta admit, it was a clever, if flawed system.