How exact do fret slots have to be cut?

[PRSpoggers]

I cut them through a miter box and used a template that I taped the wood too and the slots line up with the notches on the scale length ruler but some of them I have to redo because they aren't exactly on there, or I just cut the new slot which will I hope cover the slot I originally cut which is like really tiny space wise. I'm just worried that I didn't do it right because this is my first time doing a fretboard slotting I could've messed up. I can fix it with thin super glue and rosewood dust but still, do my cuts have the within where the notch is or do they have to be dead on straight down the middle of the notch? (I am using the stewmac 25.5 inch scale length ruler for frets)

[curtisa]

Depends which fret slots are off and by how much. In the lower registers an error in fret slot placement will result in less pitch error than it would in the upper registers given the same error in absolute distance, due to the exponential reduction of the spacing between the frets as you work your way up the fretboard. For example, an error of 1mm on the first fret will be less audible than an error of 1mm at the 17th.

 

1 hour ago, PRSpoggers said:

do my cuts have the within where the notch is or do they have to be dead on straight down the middle of the notch?

How wide is the notch you're using as your reference? If it's just a black etched mark as you'd find on a normal steel ruler I'd say that a fret slot falling on or within the edges of the mark would give perfectly acceptable results over the full length of the fret board.

[Bizman62]

Do you clamp the fretboard to the miter or just holding it by hand? If there's any play between the mitre box and the notched template your slots can get slanted.

Also, if the notches of the scale length ruler are wider than the pin, pushing the notch against the pin always in the same direction can help, assuming the slots are equal and correctly positioned. Dead center should be the most accurate way, though.

[ADFinlayson]

I always tend to start at fret 1 and work my way up because as @curtisa says, inaccuracy becomes more noticeable as you go up the fretboard - as the gap between the frets becomes smaller so does the margin for error, and I find once I've done a couple, I get more into the swing of it. I don't really like miter boxes for exact work because it's more difficult to see the work. As in my video I shared with you before, I find I'm much more accurate if I make a little nick with the saw on each end of the line, then join them up freehand.

You can definitely fill in bad slots with superglue and rosewood dust - I did that on my first fretboard. With ebony that will be totally invisible, it will be noticeable on rosewood, but if your slot is only .5mm off then your mistake would probably be hidden under jumbo fretwire anyway. Smoke and mirrors baby.

[PRSpoggers]

11 hours ago, curtisa said:

Depends which fret slots are off and by how much. In the lower registers an error in fret slot placement will result in less pitch error than it would in the upper registers given the same error in absolute distance, due to the exponential reduction of the spacing between the frets as you work your way up the fretboard. For example, an error of 1mm on the first fret will be less audible than an error of 1mm at the 17th.

 

How wide is the notch you're using as your reference? If it's just a black etched mark as you'd find on a normal steel ruler I'd say that a fret slot falling on or within the edges of the mark would give perfectly acceptable results over the full length of the fret board.

It doesnt say but I have them lined up for the most part. I ran them through a miter box with a scale attached on the bottom so the wood is on top for cutting and I matched the notches up with the space for where my fretting saw goes and just cut. They line up fairly fine, not dead in the center but they line up within the notch.

[PRSpoggers]

3 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

I always tend to start at fret 1 and work my way up because as @curtisa says, inaccuracy becomes more noticeable as you go up the fretboard - as the gap between the frets becomes smaller so does the margin for error, and I find once I've done a couple, I get more into the swing of it. I don't really like miter boxes for exact work because it's more difficult to see the work. As in my video I shared with you before, I find I'm much more accurate if I make a little nick with the saw on each end of the line, then join them up freehand.

You can definitely fill in bad slots with superglue and rosewood dust - I did that on my first fretboard. With ebony that will be totally invisible, it will be noticeable on rosewood, but if your slot is only .5mm off then your mistake would probably be hidden under jumbo fretwire anyway. Smoke and mirrors baby.

I'm using medium fretwire. I'm not necessarily measuring but I am lining up the notches up with the slot for my saw and just cut. I mean if they line up they line up. This is my first guitar, and mistakes are meant to happen. Question is, if wrongly cut my slots and I went on not knowing I did, will the guitar play poorly? I have my cuts in line with the notches on the fret scale template and my dad said they look fine. But from what I'm doing now and just decided to go on, will anything go wrong with the guitar?

[Bizman62]

21 minutes ago, PRSpoggers said:

Question is, if wrongly cut my slots and I went on not knowing I did, will the guitar play poorly?

If the frets are in the ballpark it should play just fine. After all the location of frets is a compromise. There's 'tempered' frets that are curved even a couple of millimetres off the 'normal' for accuracy.

[PRSpoggers]

1 minute ago, Bizman62 said:

If the frets are in the ballpark it should play just fine. After all the location of frets is a compromise. There's 'tempered' frets that are curved even a couple of millimetres off the 'normal' for accuracy.

Ok thats great! I mean your first guitar isn't supposed to be perfect? Heck I'm going off what Paul Reed Smith did for his first (simple mahogany body and neck SC guitar)

[ADFinlayson]

If some  frets aren't in the right place then some frets will sound out of tune, if the slots are on the notches and they're perpendicular to your centre line, they will be spot on.

[PRSpoggers]

2 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

If some  frets aren't in the right place then some frets will sound out of tune, if the slots are on the notches and they're perpendicular to your centre line, they will be spot on.

Ok so thats good to know! I may have to refill like two notches because they aren't center. But all the rest of them line up and are in the ball park in the area of the notch (this is a half circle notch from stew mac for a fret scale length calculator.) so that's fun! I'm not supposed to get everything right the first time right?

[Bizman62]

2 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

If some  frets aren't in the right place then some frets will sound out of tune

That too.

I guess a quarter of a millimetre is accurate enough.

[PRSpoggers]

Just now, Bizman62 said:

That too.

I guess a quarter of a millimetre is accurate enough.

Ok so I will measure and refill and adjust accordingly! 

[Bizman62]

3 minutes ago, PRSpoggers said:

I'm not supposed to get everything right the first time right?

You should aim to perfection in things like that. Learning away from sloppiness is much harder than learning to do it right from the very beginning.

[PRSpoggers]

Just now, Bizman62 said:

You should aim to perfection in things like that. Learning away from sloppiness is much harder than learning to do it right from the very beginning.

So most of my notches on the fretboard are center, I will post pics of what I am talking about

[PRSpoggers]

15 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

That too.

I guess a quarter of a millimetre is accurate enough.

These are my current slots, I tried lining them up the best I could

[Bizman62]

Double check each of them to be perpendicular to the center line. Also double check that your slots match with the notches. It seems there's quite a few slots that have saw marks more than a blade's width off the slot.

If all the above is OK, you can continue. If not, try filling the gaps and resaw. If you can't hide the filled slots under the frets and they look bad, get a new board and use this one as a practicing piece. Sometimes it's better to abandon a failed piece than trying to fix it. Such a piece won't be useless, though, as you can reattach it on the notched template some 1/4" off the current location and practice. After you've cut it 3 or 4 times you can even turn it around and do the same on the other side!

[PRSpoggers]

56 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Double check each of them to be perpendicular to the center line. Also double check that your slots match with the notches. It seems there's quite a few slots that have saw marks more than a blade's width off the slot.

If all the above is OK, you can continue. If not, try filling the gaps and resaw. If you can't hide the filled slots under the frets and they look bad, get a new board and use this one as a practicing piece. Sometimes it's better to abandon a failed piece than trying to fix it. Such a piece won't be useless, though, as you can reattach it on the notched template some 1/4" off the current location and practice. After you've cut it 3 or 4 times you can even turn it around and do the same on the other side!

I refilled them and they look great! A little darker since my rosewood dust is dark, but I just need to recut them and we're in business. I'll have my dad do that since I don't want to waste a perfectly good fretboard that has just indicating slots, not actual cut to depth slots currently.

[PRSpoggers]

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

Double check each of them to be perpendicular to the center line. Also double check that your slots match with the notches. It seems there's quite a few slots that have saw marks more than a blade's width off the slot.

If all the above is OK, you can continue. If not, try filling the gaps and resaw. If you can't hide the filled slots under the frets and they look bad, get a new board and use this one as a practicing piece. Sometimes it's better to abandon a failed piece than trying to fix it. Such a piece won't be useless, though, as you can reattach it on the notched template some 1/4" off the current location and practice. After you've cut it 3 or 4 times you can even turn it around and do the same on the other side!

I mean for the most part, I only had to refill about 6 slots which is fine, it's gonna get covered by the fretwire anyway, but for the rest of them they are all pretty dead center. For the future, how do I make this easier?

[Bizman62]

15 minutes ago, PRSpoggers said:

For the future, how do I make this easier?

As I've already said above plus some more:

• Mark and align the centerline of the fretboard with the template.
• Pull the template firmly against the pinned edge
• Clamp the fingerboard and the template so they don't move when you're sawing
• Keep the saw upright
• Don't force the saw through the wood. Fretboards are very hard so don't expect the saw sink like a hot knife into butter.
• Work on the corners. Start with the outer corners and continue with the corners inside the slot you're sawing. That way you don't have to push through the entire width, making the job a little easier.
• Take your time. Rest when your arm fatigues. Exhausted muscles can't do accurate jobs.
• Do it when you're in the right mood.

[PRSpoggers]

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

As I've already said above plus some more:

• Mark and align the centerline of the fretboard with the template.
• Pull the template firmly against the pinned edge
• Clamp the fingerboard and the template so they don't move when you're sawing
• Keep the saw upright
• Don't force the saw through the wood. Fretboards are very hard so don't expect the saw sink like a hot knife into butter.
• Work on the corners. Start with the outer corners and continue with the corners inside the slot you're sawing. That way you don't have to push through the entire width, making the job a little easier.
• Take your time. Rest when your arm fatigues. Exhausted muscles can't do accurate jobs.
• Do it when you're in the right mood.

is it ok to make mistakes the first time? I had to fill about 6 indicating slots because they didn't line up. I'm going to have my dad recut those for me because I don't have the steadiest hands.

[ADFinlayson]

2 hours ago, PRSpoggers said:

is it ok to make mistakes the first time? I had to fill about 6 indicating slots because they didn't line up. I'm going to have my dad recut those for me because I don't have the steadiest hands.

If I had a £1 for every mistake I made twice, I'd have at least enough for parts for a new build 

[PRSpoggers]

3 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

If I had a £1 for every mistake I made twice, I'd have at least enough for parts for a new build 

I assume most people on the forum are from across the pond! I met someone else on here from the same county actually!! But that is really reassuring!

[curtisa]

The template you're using is primarily intended to be used with Stewmac's proprietary mitre box. The notches are really meant to be used in conjunction with the pin that's fitted into their mitre box. The notches then fit over this pin to position the board to a precise location to allow you to cut the fret slot. Advance the template to the next notch and cut the next slot. It's designed so that you don't have to worry about precisely positioning your blank in the mitre box as the mechanical locating mechanism takes all the guesswork out of the equation.

That's not to say you can't use it as a guide to manually align your saw with the template, but it does make it more difficult and more prone to errors creeping in. Your photos illustrate one potential issue in that unless you're viewing the board directly above the notch you're trying to line the saw up with, parallax error can make the notches appear further left or right than they actually are. The template being underneath the fretboard also makes it difficult to line your saw up with as you're not actually placing the saw blade directly on the notch; there is always some distance between the cut you're trying to make and the reference to which you're trying to meet. Probably what would have been better would have been to use the template to mark the location of each cut with a pencil (ie lay the template on top of the blank and insert the pencil into each notch and mark the board), extend those marks using a square across the full width of your blank and then make your cuts using the saw in the mitre box and line up the blade with your pencil marks.

[PRSpoggers]

19 minutes ago, curtisa said:

The template you're using is primarily intended to be used with Stewmac's proprietary mitre box. The notches are really meant to be used in conjunction with the pin that's fitted into their mitre box. The notches then fit over this pin to position the board to a precise location to allow you to cut the fret slot. Advance the template to the next notch and cut the next slot. It's designed so that you don't have to worry about precisely positioning your blank in the mitre box as the mechanical locating mechanism takes all the guesswork out of the equation.

That's not to say you can't use it as a guide to manually align your saw with the template, but it does make it more difficult and more prone to errors creeping in. Your photos illustrate one potential issue in that unless you're viewing the board directly above the notch you're trying to line the saw up with, parallax error can make the notches appear further left or right than they actually are. The template being underneath the fretboard also makes it difficult to line your saw up with as you're not actually placing the saw blade directly on the notch; there is always some distance between the cut you're trying to make and the reference to which you're trying to meet. Probably what would have been better would have been to use the template to mark the location of each cut with a pencil (ie lay the template on top of the blank and insert the pencil into each notch and mark the board), extend those marks using a square across the full width of your blank and then make your cuts using the saw in the mitre box and line up the blade with your pencil marks.

Ah so there may have to be another birthday gift to add to the list for me! Gosh and I want another amp! Hopefully that miter box from stew mac will do me well. But for my first time is using a regular miter box fine?

[ADFinlayson]

On my first couple of builds, I used a fret slot template like that. I cut the slots freehand too, I used a mechanical pencil and the little plastic nib that the lead pokes out of was about the right size to fit perfectly in the notches, maybe try a different pencil.