MartinP

Cheers! I guess it's practically impossible, ie. it's possible to bring the moisture content (what are we talking abt. for start???) to 6-7% (which should be where we have no more "free" moisture in wood, only "molecular" moisture. Sorry, my English is probably not technically correct at all). There are around vacuum kilns with very high temp. (I've even heard of centrifugal eee... kilning) which can "cook" large quantities of timber from unseasoned to 16-18% in a few days, but that's used for low quality constructional softwood only. The problem is that when a piece of timber is dried too quickly it will dry unevenly and twist and "cup" etc. and most probably develop end-shakes. Not too nice if your precious piece of timber has 10-20 cm splits at both ends. They even submerge the ends in hot wax before kilning to slow down moisture evaporating so that the possibility that end-shakes occur is smaller. (Not that I would really know s**t abt. correct kilning but I'm working in a company producing hardwood furniture details so we have our own kilns specially built for slow and controlled hardwood kilning + an learned operator).

No idea about wearing, but Dunlop has it thus there must be some use for it. http://www.jimdunlop.com/maintenence/fretchart.html Dunlop 6180 BRASS fretwire is sold in Germany by http://www.musik-produktiv.de No idea abt. the rest of the world.

Aluminium wire (dia. 2-3mm) makes beautiful dots. Leveling them with a 500-grit paper gives a nice satin look. Just don't drill the hole too small, you can crack fingerboards' edge when the fit is too tight.

Also bear in mind, that the frame (and thus the knife edges, if not of removable type) of some tremolos are only surface hardened. So if you file too much away, you will probably end up with your knives beeing from soft metal. Supposed you have an original Floyd, it shouldn't be the case, though. Jeweller's file certainly works as does a Dremel.