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Epoxy Fretboard Finish


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I've seen some guitars, fretless basses mainly, where the fretboard has an epoxy finish. I know this seems dumb, but has anyone done this? I have a conversion bass neck where I think it would benefit greatly from an epoxy finish. I once mounted it on a body and played it, but I never put any kind of finish on and it got all scratched.

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I am considering doing it on my fretless bass build over Ziricote. It really depends on how I get along with the tone of bare wood - epoxied boards are more "mwah"-ish AFAIK. There are a couple of good videos on YouTube which I found via a Talkbass thread as Wez mentions. Very worthwhile - it does demonstrate that you don't need a lot of epoxy, and how to mask the neck from getting epoxy everywhere (which is my speciality).

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Ive seen Glass covered wood on Fretless guitars, and even stone fretboards. Epoxy should work well, from what you and other people have seen.

And on topic, I have my own question, sorry for any thread jacking. :D

I just made a Fretless guitar, and after a few coats of poly, and being glued to the neck, my Dad told me to put epoxy on it.

I guess I could still do it, if I were to tape off the Neck, but what would you guys do?

Will 3 coats of Poly hold up to Flatwound strings?

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I guess I get used to people acting like some idea that I've seen used before isn't the greatest and get offensive about it. I was half expecting a "just use flatwound strings" response. I figured that epoxy would be simply enough, i just wondered if anyone had done it and it was as simple as it sounds.

Edited by weaponepsilon
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  • 2 weeks later...

Practice on scarp, and use a high quality epoxy (West Systems, System 3, something like that) that's formulated for easy application and/or suitable for finishing purposes. The cheap hardware store type will tend to stay rubbery and be a pain to sand, while sanding a good epoxy (when cured) is very easy.

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