Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Fretwork and fingerboard glue-up

I trimmed the frets to length and spent sometime filing them to length. Following the instructions I also put a slight angle on the ends of the frets (the instructions suggested about 60 degrees, and I agree with that in concept based upon my playing experience, so I tried to make the angle about that). I'm glad that I bought the Stew-Mac fretting essentials kit because it came with several useful and rare files and then fret nippers, which really do a great job of cutting the frets flush. The book that came with it didn't help me much, though, as it seems primarily oriented to re-fretting work. Here are some photos of trimming the frets and the results of the filing.











Note: photo enhanced for contrast








After doing that, which took only about half an hour somehow, I decided to glue the fretboard on. I did this with Titebond and the rubber band strip supplied with the kit. It turned out to be easy, too.












Next step is sanding the neck and installing the tuning machines.

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