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Graphite Fingerboards


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Nowhere, other than the places that make necks with them.

'Graphite' is like saying 'it's made of wood'. It depends on compositoin, matrix, fibre length, etc.

Unless you're prepared for sticker shock and/or lots of R and D, don't even think of graphite for this app. The stuff is thick, but it's not the material with the world's greatest abrasion resistance.

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I have seem some basses and guitars with graphite fingerboards.

Does anyone have experience with them?

Where can you get stock material?

How do you radius and fret it?

I believe you're referring to Ebonol, which is a phenolic paper/glue laminate, not graphite. Common trade names are garolite are micarta. In many respects, you can work with it like wood. At least as far as radiusing and fretting goes. I haven't had much luck using edged tools on it. I've got a 3/16" garolite fretboard sitting around that I glued up from 3 pieces of 1/16" material. It is not as stiff as wood, but stiff enough, I think, for an experiment. I'm going to try it out on one of the guitars I'm building. There was a discussion here a while back about garolite. You can pull it up with a search for more info.

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I have seem some basses and guitars with graphite fingerboards.

Does anyone have experience with them?

Where can you get stock material?

How do you radius and fret it?

I believe you're referring to Ebonol, which is a phenolic paper/glue laminate, not graphite. Common trade names are garolite are micarta. In many respects, you can work with it like wood. At least as far as radiusing and fretting goes. I haven't had much luck using edged tools on it. I've got a 3/16" garolite fretboard sitting around that I glued up from 3 pieces of 1/16" material. It is not as stiff as wood, but stiff enough, I think, for an experiment. I'm going to try it out on one of the guitars I'm building. There was a discussion here a while back about garolite. You can pull it up with a search for more info.

I have heard of micarta.

I will look into that.

Thanks

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