Prostheta

After filing back the ends of the frets, I started sealing the fingerboard with Tru-Oil.

A tap at either end seats the fret. No need to hammer it all the way in when pressing.... I press frets using a modified Bessey GH20 clamp with a cheap fret press insert epoxied to the shoe. Even though the brass caul matches the radius, I clamp centre, then a quarter in from each end, then the centre again at full pressure. This seats the frets nicely, and these clamps don't develop enough pressure to crush the fret into the wood unless you really try. Do not do this.

It helps to file down the remains of the tang from the ends of the fretwire. It doesn't need to be smooth or flush. Just get rid of the majority of the remains.

Fret cut to length. Weapon of choice is basic Knipex 70 20 160. Cuts like butter. Taking this photo is difficult. Normally I'd be holding onto the wire....these are cheap modified sheet metal nibblers. A groove cut onto the black top plate accommodates the crown and the nibbler cuts the tang. I took half a mm more off one side, but this is the photo I have so there you have it. This is about the limit of how little tang can be removed without potentially crashing into the binding during install.

This one is a little out of order, as I do this slot by slot when fitting frets. You can do this straight after cleaning the slots or like me, before inserting frets. Using a triangular file, carefully bevel the fret slot. This helps both for the fretting - by easing the slot edges to accommodate the tiny fillet between the tang and underside of the crown - and also for future maintenance work, by helping to prevent excessive chipping should frets need removing. It doesn't have to be large or pretty, it's purely functional. Again, blow out any junk. Also, call this adequate time to mention (again) how difficult Maple is to inlay.

Glacial progress on both of these guitars. I'm mostly figuring out how best to organise paint time for the Invaders body, whilst in the meantime progressing Pearly little by little. My process for blind fretwork, where the slot is closed at either end by binding is fairly consistent and that's what fretjob benefits from. No surprises, just a straight process fret to fret. Firstly, all of the fret slots are cleaned out using a Hosco 0,4mm slot cleaning tool. This is a worthwhile investment for this sort of work as junk will always find its way into fret slots, and you can't just run your saw back through blind slots! Scraping the slots from the ends to the centre is the way to do this otherwise you risk slipping and breaking off your binding. The tool gets nicely into the corners to scrape any stray binding glue or whatever. ....then clean the end of the slot vertically, but carefully. You can also drag the tool back to the centre to move any loose junk out from the edges. Clean the slot with a brush or whatever works easiest.

Sounds like you're thinking is on track, especially with adjustable tensioning. That can be done with either an auxiliary pulley on a lockable cam, or if the motor and arbor are separable, a way of winding that distance out. I can think of a number of ways to do that. What sort of setup does your buffing wheel have?

Looks great as it is. The cream parts work. Setting the slack belt is a trick. I agree that it should be easy to stall it out, but see how raking improves matters. As long as it has adjustment built in you can get the feel dialled through use. Have you broken it in using a scrap of plywood or other hard wood yet? That should help the compound work better as a new wheel can be somewhat "closed" and packed in.

AirBnB review: "The place was left like an explosion in a bakery. The previous occupants must have been eating cakes night and day, and who has a mirrored coffee table anyway?"

As if any musician in their right mind would make the suggestion, "play the Freebird solo"! haha "Hotel California goes here"

Excellent. That's a problem you don't want to have to deal with!

Yikes! A soldering iron plus small balls of wet toilet paper are safer for steaming out dents....I just hope you didn't loosen the fingerboard with the iron. S-curves in a neck can be indicative of several things depending on when they occur. I'd say that you should really not be dialling out unevenness via the fretwork and doing so through the fingerboard. Frets should be fitted into a fingerboard whose surface is absolutely as close to perfect as possible....even when the high spots are levelled out in the fretwire, once the neck is under string tension and starts to find a balance between the strings and the truss rod, any weirdnesses in the neck will cause more high and low spots to reveal themselves through the frets. Let's see how this pans out and how the instrument is once you have it strung up. An instrument isn't always guaranteed to start playing games like that, however it is likely. At this stage I'm unsure how much can be done in terms of backtracking to the cause of the problem without causing additional problems through that work.

I agree on all counts. Absolutely beautiful, @Lumberjack. I just hope that my meagre painting skills can pull off 50% of the standard you've set here. Oh man, those fret ends and eased binding edges. Looks like butter.

Sounds great either way! I'm sure that this "blooming" note phenomenon that I keep calling that is maybe what others might term wolf tones? Certain notes that line up with natural coincidental resonances that compress or sustain more than others. To me, that's what gives my guitars character and also why I think that trying to make any sort of copy of "that" guitar will usually result in something else, still unique. Great choice of demo material. You can't go far wrong there.

Japanese things are a world better than Chinesium!

Looking forward to hearing it! The old neck seemed to make the instrument "bloom" at A, specifically on the fourth string 7th fret. My #1 does that in E, mostly third string 9th fret. I love how different instruments have areas that have naturally-sustaining notes which just sing. Let's see if this changes things.

Sounds more American 50s for a record player to me. "Sound Happy" would be more Chinesium.

DNA and IPA? I do admit that they sound funny to use without providing additional context.... Acetone is boring by comparison. Hey, you'll want to check those slightly bent frets before fitting them. At best they'll be difficult to handle when seating, since they're far easier when the bottom of the tang sits into the top of the slot, at worst they might have enough spring to pop out when seated. Nickel silver frets are more malleable (ductile?) than harder alloys like stainless steel, but it's worth making your life a bit easier before you make it harder!

This reminds me that I need to buy some more acetone

Exactly. SiGen is the spiritual successor to FretFind2D. Even though I draw all of my string and fret geometry from scratch in CAD, this does exactly the same thing from a GUI.

What an oddball! It's weird to think that back in the 70s, these would look like this out of the factory. Since I never grew up around this era of (rare) guitar, I'm only used to seeing them with a few decades on the clock.

Headstock bound. This was a lot easier, being done on the table router. The height of the binding was raised to a height so that it meets the fingerboard binding and the beginning of the nut shelf. To recap this, the headstock face will be painted black, the binding scraped back, a decal applied and then the lot buried under a clear. I have a bit of sanding/scraping to do around the perimeter of the headstock from compressed grain caused during the stepped cutting on the CNC. This is likely an aspect of workpiece or cutter deflection.

You might be a redneck if you think the plaque below Lady Liberty says, "her eyes are up there"? Not my finest hour. I'll get my coat.

Best ever. Bit of wood with a nail in it. That's done us for over twenty years and countless beers.

This is one of the few cases where I advocate for the use of twist drills. You probably will only find 8,5mm in those anyway. Remember that when you open out these holes, run the drill backwards so it doesn't screw itself in or chip out the rim. I know you probably know this, but I'd rather sound patronising in advance than tell you after the fact!