A quick setup

[Bizman62]

A week ago I had a chat with a friend who had some fret issues on his acoustic guitar. His opinion was that it required a full fret replacement because especially the first fret had worn so badly. I asked him to send a picture, offering to do some leveling and recrowning during the meeting we participated in last weekend. He was a bit hesitant but finally agreed to give the milder approach a try. This is what the worst case looked like:

Well, on Saturday I laid my tools on the table and having some audience started by loosening the strings and rolling them away - no changing this time. Then I took my notched straightedge and straightened the backbow the neck had. Then I protected the fretboard with masking tape and used a marker on the frets. There was a new strip of 400 wet'n'dry on my aluminium beam so it didn't take too long until all colour was gone except a tiny spot at the first fret/B string. My friend was impressed!

Then it was time to check the levelness with a fret rocker which revealed a couple of higher spots. A couple of strokes with a grooved file took care of those. I then recoloured the frets and crowned them with a smooth edge triangular file. Then it was time to strip the tape off and recheck the straightness of the neck and do a sanity check with the rocker and it was time to do some polishing. A nail buffer block was the perfect tool for that! I didn't bother wrapping the entire fretboard, instead I just took two strips of tape and moved them on both sides of the fret I was currently working on. Finally a couple of strokes with a fine file along the edges took care of any protruding fret ends.

Now that the frets were level and shiny it was take for a make up. I had some D'Andrea "lemon" oil which cleaned both the gunk on the fretboard (notice the dirt stripes on the markers of the third fret !) and the dust all over. It also gave a nice sheen on the bridge. Restrung the guitar and checked the action. The nut was OK but the truss rod required some tightening - and some more on Sunday morning. Apparently the neck isn't too stiff or the strings are a bit on the heavy side. Anyhow, the action was low enough on the money side and acceptable at the dusty end.

I also stabilized the big crack on the lower bout with some clear nail varnish. The cracking and checking are original, the guitar was sold as "clearcoat failured", a metallic Laurel Green -ish (or maybe BRG) being the actual colour.

Need I say that my friend was very happy with the result?

 

[Bizman62]

A couple of "after" pictures

 

[Akula]

Very nice work!

 

I'd love to see more setup and fretwork on these forums. Having started out building guitars with pre-made necks, I didn't actually have to do any real fretwork of my own for a good while, just action relief and string height stuff. In the past two years especially I've done levelling and full refretting for many guitars, but it's a never-ending cycle of development towards perfection, and I'd love to learn more from the greats.

 

 - Jam