Bizman62

I have done absolutely nothing to it during the week! The spot at the edge really looked and felt like the top coat had burst and revealed the first brand of lacquer I used for an area of 2x4 mm. Now it's smooth as can be! And the vertical whitish stripe on the side looked and felt like bubbles. Guess that lacquer will take forever to dry to the level I can put it in a gig bag without it getting marks from the weave. There's still some sanding to do with the highest grits, I guess starting from 1500 wet to 3000 and 6000. The issue may have been due to the pads drying as the time was running out and I only washed the pads hastily under the tap.

Just during the last few months a semi-professional builder told here that the new fret brand didn't match with his fret slotting saw as well as the brand he had previously used. It either was a matter of different design i.e. thinner tangs or sloppier manufacturing. So loose frets can be an issue even in new guitars. Not necessarily in standardized factory builds but in bespoke instruments. No, I'm just a hobbyist. I've built five necks from scratch using fretboards slotted by the tutor of the communal guitar building course. A good thing building guitars in a group is that it allows to participate in the building of a dozen guitars instead of one which is a learning process by itself. It also helps that the tutor has a Master degree in Luthiery so the basics are right. During the years I've also watched about a thousand guitar building videos which at best can show the issues and methods as well as a real person - or even more since you can rewind and watch again so many times you really understand what's going on. Without claiming to be a master I'd say that I know the mechanics of fretting, how to do it and why do it that way. And, as you noticed, I like to wonder how things work or might work, the mechanics behind. Lastly, I NOTICED A FLAW IN MY FIRST POST! When talking about thermal expansion my line of thought went upside down: Nickel silver expands more than steel so when the frets warm up they will fill the slots better, thus reducing any damping effect there may be. In theory a warm neck should transfer the highest harmonics better. Also, as you mentioned the warmth of your fingers have more effect than any string vibration, and the warmth of your palm will warm up the entire neck. The unit for measuring thermal expansion is a multiplier telling the effect of a single degree higher temperature. I suppose the neck will become several degrees warmer above room temperature after some playing so the metals certainly expand. Does that make any audible difference? Most likely not. But it could be measured or calculated using existing charts. Lastly, all this pondering is purely theoretical!

Guess the overhang in your builds doesn't touch the top?

The strange thing is neither I or my daughter could find those spots yesterday! Just a week ago the worst spot looked like a burst blister! Is there a thing called self healing lacquer???

I could show you piles of alder...

Did you use the OtherMedia button down right?

That is a solid spruce top so for a "real" fix using real wood for filling most of the missing parts would be the proper thing to do, especially for an expensive guitar. If still possible, you could try to apply some heat to the splinter and try to get it off in one piece. Gluing that piece in place might already be enough for a large enough flat area for the fretboard end. For a very cheap guitar I might be tempted to use wood putty and in such a small and stiff area it might not even ruin the tone. But as a learning excercise I'd use some sort of wood. It doesn't have to be spruce for such a thin layer. As the fretboard already is of another wood a veneer of any wood should do - well, obviously not balsa or something similar, but any solid wood should do.

Ahh, in that case it might be better to leave the top closed.

You should be able to create a link showing the actual photo from your Google drive, for now I just copied the picture for others to see without opening the link, If it's only place A you're talking about I might leave it just as it is. You can try to glue the missing piece back in if you could get it off the fretboard, or you can tidy the spot and put a slice of veneer to fill the gap. In any case you should scrape the fretboard clean and level before putting it back as fitting tore out pieces like that blindly is a mission impossible. Spot B looks like it's just the rosette ring lifted off the slot, but if there's a slice missing all along from the neck slot to the rosette, then filling and leveling that area is recommendable. I can't quite see if it's just the edge of the lacquer or have you managed to peel a long slice off half the width of the fretboard. Anyhow, the majority of the top under the fretboard should be level before gluing the fretboard back. Small spots missing a thin sliver can be left as is, areas large enough to cause the fretboard to bend have to be leveled. Just don't make any patches taller than the original gluing surface!

If the fret bounces off the slot it's obviously loose. If it's loose there's space for it to vibrate. I wasn't talking about homogenizing or stabilizing the wood in the slot, although it too is done for the same purpose, to make the slot uniformly tight to prevent the fret from vibrating in a softer spot. Maybe I've used a wrong term, deforming might be closer. That can be done with hand tools. When cutting the fret ends they stretch and deform to a sharp point. I also mentioned that the wood around the fret compresses during hammering the frets in, making the fit tighter. As steel is harder than nickel silver you can push SS frets into tighter slots without deforming the tangs. Maybe I should keep from commenting before my English is good enough to prevent making people angry.

No, I don't have any proof of any of those, nor do I have any equipment to measure them. As I said there's most likely no audible difference. What I do know is that both fret slotting saws and fret tangs come in various widths. Builders here have told that they either have difficulties to hammer/press the frets into the slots or they have difficulties to make them stick. If you need glue to keep frets down then there's enough space for vibration. And if the neck bends backwards after fretting then something has to compress in order to the neck to straighten. That's just logic. I also do know that steel is harder than nickel silver and if there's enough pressure it will compress easier. And fretboards are made of very hard woods. Supposedly you can use more pressure to force a steel fret into a really tight slot - I've read someone here having had nickel silver frets bend instead of sliding into tight slots. In such a case the fit must be really tight. Agreed, the thermal expansion thing was far fetched. It's a real thing, though. But as you said it really can not affect the tone by any stretch. Can I hear the difference of any of the three factors? No. Can you hear any? Based on your comment, no. Can a dog or a cat or a bat hear them? Who knows? Can any of them be measured? Most likely yes. Does it matter? Most likely not. My main point was to raise some discussion and that worked.

I could search all week and I couldn't just "find" such a piece in my wood storage! Then again, my main wood storage consists mostly of arm's length pieces of log chopped into quarters or smaller fractions.

First, that scoop makes the build look so much more top drawer! No one can see it but you know it's there - and it can change the resonance. Based on the theories learned from RSW mandolin builds I guess you won't get a true acoustic sound out of that guitar unless you cut a hole on the top to let the sound out! Further, there's most likely some proven wisdom behind the traditional size and location of the sound hole(s) to get the most out of it. Simplified, the top should be resonant and the bottom should be stiff and scooped like a parabolic mirror so it directs the sound waves to a single spot i.e. the sound hole.

An amp designed for an acoustic might be more versatile as it's clean. There's pedals to produce any electric sound you can imagine plus some you can't.

One can't post photos until having posted a few posts to prove they're not spammers. However there's workarounds: Using some online service for hosting photos works, even Google Photos. Another option could be (I can't verify if it works for a new member) creating a Member gallery and upload and link the photos from there:

What would you folks think? Should I try to apply some more lacquer to spot fix that or just wet sand it, trying to blend it? It looks different now to what it did on Saturday, so it might just be that the sandpaper dried and the friction affected the lacquer.

I beg to partially differ. Only partially. I fully agree that there can't be any audible difference between the materials. But there is a difference or two. First, there's differences in actual measurements. As @ADFinlayson mentioned in another post the width of the tang and the size of the barbs can vary from one manufacturer to another. Thus, if the slots are cut equal, a wider tang will make the surrounding wood compress more than a narrower one. Yet the narrow one may still sit tight enough not to resonate. But it may vibrate just enough to act as a damper, killing the sound sooner. And as with all vibrations the highest frequencies die first. That would somewhat explain the OP's experience. Second, not only does the wood compress, metals compress as well and silver nickel compresses more than steel. Thus even if the frets are of exactly equal dimensions the steel will sit tighter in the slot. Again we're talking about the damping effect caused by the flex. Third, and this is most likely the least important, different metals conduct heat differently. Nickel silver is made of copper and nickel and zinc, all of which conduct heat much better than steel. When the strings vibrate against the fret some of the energy is changed to heat which causes thermal expansion, more for nickel silver than for steel. Again that affects the seating and thus the damping effect. The only truly solid fret is one that is carved directly out of the fretboard and the only truly uniform material would be man made - a fretboard ground out of a single slab of either SS or nickel silver would tell if there's an audible difference caused by the material. My ears aren't good enough any more to hear frequencies past some 12000 Hz but my kids can hear much higher frequencies. Thus I wouldn't trust my ears for telling a minuscule effect to high tones, I'd ask a highly sensitive teenager to tell if there's any difference.

Of course you can also say it's a price tag, in which case you should leave it. I can't quite figure out the letter after the four numbers, it might be the symbol for Costa Rican colón - in which case I'd still rub it off...

It's starting to get there, sanded up to 6000 for the most parts. The sides still need some love and affection and I'm afraid I've managed to sand through the lacquer to the previous layer which was of another brand. Hopefully not irrepairably though... The headstock hasn't been sanded yet so no progress in that part. Also the neck has a lot of masking tape glue residue. There'll be a 2 week hiatus due to the schools having the "skiing holiday", maybe the kitchen table will see some action next weekend...

In that case I'd still sand/rub the storage number off...

There's been no questioning about your building skills, outstanding work as usual. What makes me happy is to see your photographic skills have improved! Especially in the headstock photo you've managed to get the focus and aperture right to blur the carpet below.

Thanks! I guess you were more patient than I've been with my rattle can experiment. In trying to get a good coverage I managed to get runs every time. The higher temperature also helps, our workshop is in a gigantic hall made out of sheet metal, two stores high open space which means it's not too warm when it's -20 outside, at least not on the floor level. If you only have half a day once a week to do the finish you'd like to get as much done as possible, resulting in fanciful inventions for carrying barely touch dry products home in the car without damaging neither the finish nor the upholstery.

Congrats for the GOTM, that was a tough one to choose which one to vote!

Accompanying the two above, an outdoor workshop would be nice but there's snow up to my crotch in our yard. A question or three about using automotive rattle cans: How thick was an individual layer? How long between layers? Did you sand in between? Plus a bonus question: Did you finally sand the finish level and polish it or is it shiny just from the can?

That's so very true! Actually it reminds me of a pocket camera way back when film was still a common thing: It only had two focuses, normal/wide and tele or in digits 45 and 100 mm. The logic was that people usually don't use the in-between lengths of a zoom lens, it's only the extents that matter. As I said I like the bleeding of the other pickup as it adds a bit of warmth to the bridge and a bit of snap to the neck pickup. There's a sweet spot where I tend to turn the knob, about 1/4 or so. A solid component doing just that would be enough for my needs... Slower feeding speed or more RPM, maybe? And shallower cuts, either by doing multiple passes starting way outside the template or sawing the outlines more accurately before routing. A four flute router bit might also help, or a spiral cutter. And of course the grain direction matters.