Fretting Question

[ibreakemineedtobuildem]

I want to undercut the fret as you would for a bound neck,without binding the neck.I want to fill in the fret slot ends with rosewood dust and epoxy to cover the slots.

First,is/was this done by others before?Will my fret ends stay tight to the board while having the tangs trimmed underneath?

[Primal]

I'm sure that its has been done before. Your frets should stay in perfectly fine since you are only going to be removing maybe 1/8" of the tangs off the ends of the frets. Shouldn't have anything to worry about.

[Guitarfrenzy]

Not only has it been done before, but in my opinion it's what is called a first class fretjob. All bound or unbound guitar necks I fret are done this way. Simply because it allows the seasonal weather change to not allow any sharp fret ends from being exposed. Here is a close up of how I cut the fretwire on each end with the fret nippers.

It's the only picture I have of it but your fretwire should be already bent and radiused before you do this and even before you cut them to size, unless you only have the fret bending pliers like I used, but no longer use.. lol That a whole other story.. Anyway I just use Titebond glue and press them in and later use some epoxy and rosewood dust mixture to fill in the side holes that the fret tang leaves. The only real issue you could have is that if you don't slightly overbend the fretwire before you install it, the ends might not be snug enough for a good fretjob. So basically, slightly over-radius the fretwire so you won't have those issues. Just a little hint from me to you.. Check out this link of mine that will better show you the methods I used. Making of A Strat page 6

Good Luck

Matt Vinson

[ibreakemineedtobuildem]

thanks alot.That tut was a big help.

Nice Strat too.Love the blue burst

[catnine]

Guitarfrenzy

You have quite a setup there I must say . I am on my fourth strat and this makes my 12th guitar .

I just did my frets today and I still do it with a fretting hammer and wood glue . I always cut my slots to follow the radius of the finger board to leave as my wood as possible . And I cut the slots just a tad deepththe tangs and leave the tangs show as an unbound board on a strat . Reason being I don't want the ends to snag or lift . I suppose over radiusing and glue would keep the ends down .

I had old white marker dots that I had for years and already set them in the neck but for side dots I could only find the pearl ones from stew mac . These are odd dogs , even though they are perfectly straight and in line the illusion is that they are not and at certain angles you can't see some but this is all I could find and they are in there now .

I did one neck as you leaving the neck unshaped and finishing the fretwork , the only problem I ran into was once I did shape the neck even though the fret slots were the proper width for the tang , the neck did go into a slight upbow from waht I suppose was fret compression , and I installed a oneway truss rod . I was lucky though , the string tension was just enough to pull the neck into a very slight back bow . Since I use very heavy strings I lucked out .

Are you concerned about this issue or is there a specific reason you are installing the frets in advance ? Just curious if you don't mind my asking .

William

[Guitarfrenzy]

Guitarfrenzy

You have quite a setup there I must say . I am on my fourth strat and this makes my 12th guitar .

I just did my frets today and I still do it with a fretting hammer and wood glue . I always cut my slots to follow the radius of the finger board to leave as my wood as possible . And I cut the slots just a tad deepththe tangs and leave the tangs show as an unbound board on a strat . Reason being I don't want the ends to snag or lift . I suppose over radiusing and glue would keep the ends down .

I had old white marker dots that I had for years and already set them in the neck but for side dots I could only find the pearl ones from stew mac . These are odd dogs , even though they are perfectly straight and in line the illusion is that they are not and at certain angles you can't see some but this is all I could find and they are in there now .

I did one neck as you leaving the neck unshaped and finishing the fretwork , the only problem I ran into was once I did shape the neck even though the fret slots were the proper width for the tang , the neck did go into a slight upbow from waht I suppose was fret compression , and I installed a oneway truss rod . I was lucky though , the string tension was just enough to pull the neck into a very slight back bow . Since I use very heavy strings I lucked out .

Are you concerned about this issue or is there a specific reason you are installing the frets in advance ? Just curious if you don't mind my asking .

William

First off thanks guys for all the kind words. As far as using a fretting hammer there is nothing wrong with it, I just would rather use something that will ease the fretwire in, so that the frets are guaranteed to seat properly. Also, I gave up the fretting hammer after two refrets..lol.. Didn't take me long to figure out there was a much better way for me, although I'm not saying that using a fret hammer is bad, it's just a slower less consistent process when I'm the one doing it.. lol Also, I simply don't have the compression your talking about when I do it this way because the slots on mine have been preslotted for the fretwire that I use, so I've never had an issue with this. But most the time I do shape the neck first though before fretting and I did finish the fretjob on that one after it was shaped if you read the whole tutorial. I don't know if you can see it from this photo but it was after the neck was shaped with the copy carver that I pressed the rest of the frets in.

But if you don't keep everything level at all times you might have the compression problem your talking about. If your neck wood isn't level before gluing on the fretboard you could have problems, etc. There can be all kinds of issue that would cause the problem your talking about, so no I haven't had backbow with either method. (Before or after the shaping of the neck that is).

[catnine]

I thought about getting a fret press , the noise alone hammering frets in makes this a job for the daytime hours . I have gotten pretty good with the hammer anuhe stew mac saw and their frets so it come out a good snug fit . I just went through your strat making pages , There is alot of info there and it is also nice that you provide different ways of doing each job .

I posted today about my latest strat and the screwup I made drilling the trem pivot screw holes and a few photo's of it . I only have a router and table top drill press and the array of hand tools to build my strats so it takes a bit more time for me . I am hoping the guitar will intonate without dedoing the holes . I don't really care for the gap between the pickguard and front edge of the trem but if it plays in tune I can ignore this or make my own pickguard to close the gap . It is only 1/16 " I need to move toward the neck but it stands out like a sore thumb .