Hello all,
Having read all of the above thread yesterday I've been thinking about the various problems and think I may have come up with an idea to solve some of these problems though having not experimented I'm not sure of what new problems would be introduced.
Distributed Fretting:
The particular problems I hope to overcome are wood constriction, slot constriction and neck bowing.
The idea is that given a 22 fret neck you'd start by cutting the 1st, 22nd and 11th fret, you'd seat your frets in the slots using your preferred method. Then you'd hit the middle ground cutting say slots six and seventeen, seat your frets then move on maybe frets eight, twenty, fourteen, and three, cutting the slots then seating your frets. I'd also try leaving the neck over night, letting the tension of the neck and fretboard settle and distribute, placing the neck on a flat surface (going at the fretting before contouring the back of the neck and before shaping the headstock), between two weights or in a clamp not putting pressure on the neck but stopping it from moving so that any attempt to expand will be distributed along the length of the neck, also placing some weights on top of the fretboard (distributed of course), just to stop it bowing upwards.
The next day you'd remove the clam and weights, and continue cutting then seating frets in the same distributed manner.
I can't try this as I have no wood, no tools and not even a work bench but want to build my own guitar, hopefully starting this year some time.
I'd be interested to know what people think of this approach, or even if anyone has tried it.
It'll take a lot longer doing it this way, but I'd hope to get a much more stable neck as a result.
Cheers
Steve
When I talk about cutting frets above what I really mean is cutting slots.
