GlensGuitars Posted July 26, 2023 Report Posted July 26, 2023 Hello, I have been building guitars for years and found I struggle to get the best results after leveling and polishing frets. After crowning, I've gone from 320/400 to 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000. I have some Stew Mac polishing papers that go up to about 8000. For some reason, I find that there are scratches left when I go on to the above 1000 grits. I cut off little squares for each grit about 1" b 3" and they cut aggressively for about 5 frets and it seems like they get dull and don't remove all the scratches. Is it best to just keep using new sandpaper every 3-5 frets? Every increase in grit I sand 90 degrees or perpendicular to the last. When I finally get done criss crossing through all the grits up to 2000, I have no idea what grit the scratches that are still there are.. It's hard to tell as there is smoothness as well. I've tried looking with a magnifier.. It is a tedious process and feel like there is a better way. Anyone have any pointers? Thanks guys, Glen Quote
Bizman62 Posted July 26, 2023 Report Posted July 26, 2023 I've found an occasional scratch on my builds as well but they've definitely been left because of poor crowning, gouging along a fret with the end corner of the cheap chinese crowning file or something like that. Sloppy workmanship, that is... For what it's worth, I start by taping the fretboard before crowning. I then take a dry piece of wet'n'dry and roll it to a flexible semi-sturdy tool - a couple of layers is enough. I run that tool along the fretboard, across the frets, to smoothen the file marks. After that I usually take a nail polishing block! My favourite is the appr. 1" x 3 " cheap one as there's plenty of surface. The first grit (for leveling tha nail) is too rough so I start at #2 and go through the grits along each fret. That's it. I may slap across the frets with a 6000 foam based abrasive which is actually meant for polishing lacquer but basically the nail polishing block is good enough. As you mentioned, the papers get dull. The blocks I use suffer from the same but they're easy to control so that you can use a clean spot for every fret. On the bright coloured surface the metal residue is highly visible so it's easy to see which areas are clogged. As mentioned, I only go across the frets right after crowning. I do that mostly for rounding any corners left from the triangular file. It should also take care of any longitudinal scratches but as I mentioned the ones I've had are from using a poor tool in a sloppy manner. I have a bunch of different crowning files and some are not that well finished. Anyhow, after that first run with the rolled paper I do the polishing along the fret. If that leaves scratches, they're a) very small and more importantly b) they're in the same direction as string bending happens. Scratches across a fret are a nightmere when bending, don't you think? Snap-snap-snap... Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.