Mind Riot

I feel like such an idiot. I took a closer look and realized what was going on. When I sanded the top of the fret flat so I could recrown it, I just used a scrap of 320 on my fingertip. It LOOKED like a flat, but upon closer inspection I realized that it wasn't. As I should have known, my fingertip conformed to the fret top and simply sanded the contoured top a bit, not creating a true flat. So when I went back with the file, naturally it filed virtually all of the fret at once, since I hadn't actually created a flat on top and there were no real edges to remove. Boy, is my face red. At least this was only on my junk neck, and not on one of my guitars.

Hi all. I was just wondering what some of your tips and tricks are for getting the most use out of your sandpaper? Particularly higher grit stuff. I've been picking up a variety of sandpaper to use for fret work, and I know the finer grits load up very quickly and lose their effectiveness. Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I'm just wondering what everyone does to clean their paper and get the most use out of it. Cloth? Compressed air? I noticed some kind of wax rubber block with a handle at my local hardware store that says it's for cleaning abrasives and lubricating. Anybody ever use anything like this? I also picked up a set of those little foam abrasive finishing pads from Stew Mac when I made my last order, the ones that go from 2400 to 12000 grit. I'd like to get the most out of them, but I'm not sure how to go about cleaning them off to restore the cut. Again, I apologize if this is something everyone else already knows, but I haven't done much finishing or polishing work in the past where I've used very fine paper like this, and I'm not sure how to deal with how it loads up. I'm going to be using this stuff for fret polishing and removing file marks after leveling, so using them wet isn't really an option. Thanks in advance for any information.

So I returned the diamond file I bought, and after some thinking, I ordered one of the standard double sided toothed files from Stew Mac. It arrived the other day, and I finally got around to trying it on my junk neck today. I used some 320 grit sandpaper to flatten the top of a fret a tad, then I colored the fret with a Sharpie and went at it with the file. I looked closely at the file, and the toothed surfaces seem to have very similar widths to fretwire, so I figured it would work fine. Like my last file, it just lowered the flat, rather than making it smaller. So now I'm wondering if perhaps I'm expecting something out of my tool that it isn't designed to give me. Most of the stuff I've read on fret leveling (including Dan Erlewine's book) tells me that the final contact point on a fret after leveling and recrowning should be a tiny thin line on the top of the fret. But both of the crowning files I've had in my posession and tested thus far leave a fairly wide flat on top of the fret due to the shallowness of their cut. This one leaves a flat that measures 1.08 mm wide. I know I'm a novice and I'm still learning, but a one milimeter flat on the top of a fret seems a bit wide to call it a 'thin and neat' string contact. So what's the deal here? Am I expecting a neat, clean, thin contact point when a crowning file simply isn't capable of giving it to me? I've tried crowning with a triangle file I modified (meaning grinding the edges smooth) and although it's tricky I was able to get a tiny thin line of Sharpie left on the top of the fret. This leaves the fret with more of a triangular shape than a round one, I assume just due to my inexperience. So what kind of contact point or flat do you all have on the tops of your frets after crowning them? Is the triangle file method the only one that is capable of this level of precision, and all the specialized crowning files leave a wider flat, and folks just accept it? Or is there something else I'm missing here? I know I've asked a lot of questions without contributing a whole lot as of yet, but I'm still learning. I really appreciate everyone's advice and patience. Thanks!

I bought some 8" radius blocks for fret leveling from ebay. I bought five of them, with radii of 9.5", 10", 12", 14", and 16". They are lovely quartersawn hardwood. I'm just wondering if I should seal them with something to prevent any possible warping or swelling in the future. I asked the seller, and he said that unless I live in an area with high humidity it shouldn't be a problem. I live in Northern California, near the Oregon border. Pretty dry, high elevation here. What do you all think? And if I do seal it, what should I use? Thanks for any thoughts!

Yes, you'll pretty much have to work that out. I would suggest practicing on a guitar you don't care that much about, but still has reasonable playing action etc. After all, you won't know if you did a good job if you dress the frets on an unplayable guitar. I've used the triangle file with good results, but it takes practice. I've also used the toothed fret file, takes a bit more effort than the diamond file. I don't own a diamond file but I've heard a fret will crown in only a few swipes with one of those. One thing that should be part of everyone's method is to mark the frets (with a felt marker) prior to levelling and then again, prior to crowning so you can monitor your progress. When finished crowning a fret there should be a tiny bit of felt marker left down the center. That way you know you haven't gone too far. Take your time and have fun with it. I've got two junk necks to butcher in my mad experiments. One of them has fret damage and the other has a long crack in the neck wood. I got them from a friend who got them from a small builder. I'll be using them to test out my tools, but in order to actually tell if I've done a good fret level I'll have to try it on one of my own guitars. My modified Squier '51 will be my first real instrument test subject, and I'll make sure to take lots of pics.

Yes, I remember reading the thread where you posted the measurements as I was researching. I have to say, the numbers were quite I don't know what kind of fretwire was used for designing those files, but it's not like any wire I've ever seen. Perhaps as stainless steel fret wire becomes more common, diamond tools for fret work will also become more widespread and have more variety.

Well, consider this : Most people who've used both the diamond and the toothed crowning files like the diamond ones better, so that leads me to believe that *I* would like the toothed ones even less, but I haven't tried either, and I've been re-crowning frets for about 20 years ! I just use a flat file on one side of the fret at a time, and use some straight swipes while moving the file little by little, or use a "rolling action". Often the part of the fret that's still got the original crown will give me a "lead start" on how to use the file to continue that same curve more towards the top of the fret. It is the most PITA thing that I do, and would always love a better way to come along. If I can't find ultimate crowning files, how are you ? (but everyone's different, so what doesn't work for me, might work just fine for you, and the opposite could be true as well). Yeah, it can drive someone nuts whose really fussy about how a guitar can possibly play and sound it's best. Honestly, it was kind of a dumb question for me to ask anyway. I'm sitting here asking everyone for recommendations on a file when every single thing I've read and seen on fret work tells me that there is no one best way and that everyone uses something different. I think what I may end up doing is buying a toothed traditional file from Stew Mac and picking up a cant saw file while I'm at it, and try them both out. That way I don't have a large investment in a diamond file if I end up liking the triangle file more, and more options are always good. My first instinct is that I'm too new to this to use a triangle file, but I won't know until I try it if it will work for me. I'm sure I'll be posting more questions and updates as my tools arrive and I progress.

I "think out loud" too easily. Maybe I'm actually talking to myself, trying to steer myself into being more productive (you know, more time in the shop *doing*, instead of online *talking*) I wrote "oh boy" because you wrote about a topic I couldn't resist adding something to. Something else : If you ever watch some of those videos where they do this quickly sandpaper fret-rounding, you might notice they seem to do it more in some parts of the neck than others. That bugs me when I see that. Maybe being on camera throws them off or something. I would love to see any videos I could find on fret work, if I could find any that won't cost me fifty bucks. I'd love to make the investment; I know they'd teach me a lot, but at the moment my budget is going for fret tools. Speaking of which, any recommendations for a fret crowning file for a novice? I'm thinking of just getting one of the traditional double sided toothed files and picking up one of the digital calipers while I'm at it. All the options with the toothed versus diamond, offset versus traditional, radiused versus triangle, I'm going nuts here.

Just to reiterate, I don't plan on using this method, and frankly when I first read about it I thought it sounded pretty, um, well, dumb. I don't plan on using my foam padded radius block method either, I was just curious what everyone thought. I suppose someone like Dan Erlewine can successfully level and crown frets using a variety of methods, even some most of us consider quite unorthodox, due to his level of experience. I'm still trying to decide what crowning file to get for my bad self now that I've returned that diamond file. Any thoughts are most welcome. I'm considering just getting one of the traditional long toothed files, the one for medium and large fret wire. I don't see myself working on any older Fenders with small fretwire any time soon, all of my guitars are newer, less expensive imports with bigger wire. Thoughts? And soapbarstrat, why don't you want to be a regular here anymore? In all my searches on stuff, you've posted some very informative information and I know I'm not the only one who would appreciate your continued input.

I'm always on the lookout for information on fret leveling and such, and I've come across a couple of tutorials with a rather unusual method described for recrowning frets after leveling. One of these tutorials was written by Dan Erlewine on some bass website. Basically, what was described was leveling the frets using one of the standard methods (radius blocks, steel bar, etc.) and then wrapping sandpaper around your hand and using long strokes up and down the fretboard with moderate pressure, going both ways, to recrown the frets. It seemed that the softness of your fingers would help to conform the sandpaper to the frets, facilitating the recrowning. Another method I saw somewhere was using a foam block wrapped in sandpaper using the same strokes. Here's the link to Dan Erlewine doing this on a Gretsch Electromatic bass: http://www.bassplayer.com/story.asp?sectio...storycode=15211 To be honest, neither of these methods seem very precise to me, and I was somewhat surprised to see Mr. Erlewine using such a technique. It seems that there would be a huge probability of human error. However, I am curious to hear any thoughts on this that anyone would like to share. But something occured to me when I was later pondering what I had read. Say one was doing a fret level on a cylindrical board, so radius blocks could be used. Now let's say the leveling has already been done. If someone were to attach a couple of layers of double sided foam tape or a double stick foam pad to a radius block, then attach sandpaper to that, so that you had a radiused but soft surface of abrasive capable of hugging the contours of the frets, would running that gently with even pressure up and down the fretboard recrown frets with any kind of effectiveness? I hope I'm describing it well enough to it's easily understood. Basically some kind of firm but soft foam sandwiched between a radius block and a sheet of sandpaper. This would seem to me to work at least as well if not better than the simple "hand swipe" method. The foam would allow the abrasive to follow the contours of the frets and gently knock the sharp edge off the tops, and using the radius block for backing would keep the radius even and keep the leveling from being wrecked. It might help to remove some of the human error, and keep things more consistent than using just your hand. Of course, the primary logistical problem I see with this is the same as with the "hand swipe" method, namely that of attaining a thin, neat contact point on the top of the fret. Both the "hand swipe" method and the one I've just described seem to me that they would probably knock the sharp edge off the fret top, but neither of them seem like they would very precisely and truly crown a fret to a thin and clean contact point. It seems that they would both round the fret top somewhat, but also leave a pretty wide flat still on top. Personally, I don't think I'll be using either method. But reading about it did pique my curiosity and I thought I'd share my thoughts and see if anyone else has any experience or insight to offer.

Well, now that I've returned the diamond one I'm back in the position of choosing another crowning file. I'm open to suggestions. Looking for something fairly idiot proof as I'm just starting out. I could afford pretty much any file Stew Mac has to offer (at least any ONE of them, heh). I was thinking of getting the three file Gurian they offer, since it has the three burrs and the ease of use might be better on set neck or neck through guitars (I already own one set neck guitar). I'm kind of gun shy on the diamond files now; I've heard quite a bit about them not fitting very many types of fret wire well. But all experiences are welcome, and recommendations.

This one was $40 buy it now with about five bucks shipping. I didn't get it from an ebay store like the Fret Shop, it was just from an individual. While this file isn't satisfactory, the seller has been nothing but courteous and professional the whole way through the deal, and I just heard back from him and he has no problem with me returning it for a full refund. The Stew Mac file is certainly attractive, but I don't know if I can afford it right now. I may just end up going for the three file Gurian, the regular steel toothed file, unless some cold hard cash comes my way. Tools. What is it about them that has such mysterious mojo?

I'm afraid I don't understand. The cutting surface is 5/32" wide, way wider than any fret wire. And with the shallowness of the cutting surface, it would cut the top of any fret the same way (unless the fret was close to 5/32" wide). If I had a file that was too small for these frets it would be cutting into the sides of the fret without recrowning it as the cutting surface would be too narrow for the width of the fret. The file is too wide and shallow, not too narrow. In any case, I'm going to send it back as it's completely useless for crowning any fret wire I've ever seen.

Hi all. My second topic about fret work. Groovy. So I ordered an offset diamond fret crowning file from some guy on ebay. It arrived today. Looks just like the Stew Mac one, minus their logo. 150 grit on one side, 300 on the other. I have a junk neck with fret damage and a busted truss rod that I use for testing out tools. So I took a bit of 320 grit sandpaper, and used my finger to sand a flat onto the top of one of the frets. This flat was not the width of the fret or anything, but about 5/64" wide. I would imagine it would be somewhat similar to the kind of flat one might have after a light leveling. These frets are jumbo. Looks like typical jumbo frets. I can't measure the width very well as I don't have calipers (yet), but they measure about .055" tall with feeler guages stacked next to them and a straight edge used for measurement. Pretty tall wire, and they're wide as well. Using my Stew Mac action guage, they look like they're a typical .110" width for jumbo wire. So I whip out my new file to see how it will recrown this bad boy. It doesn't seem to be cutting the sides at all, but the top. I keep going, figuring at first it won't be obvious, and it's probably cutting just the very edges of the flat. But I keep going, a few strokes at a time, and checking. It's not narrowing the flat at all. There are marks very clearly showing the file is contacting the entire flat, and not touching anything else. I keep going, same result. I want to make sure I'm not imagining things, so I polish the top of the fret with a scrap of 800 grit to remove some marks, and file again. Same thing. I mark the top of the fret with a sharpie, so see if it's actually leaving a tiny flat and my eyes are playing tricks on me. It removes all the sharpie mark at once. So I look at the file. It's quite a bit wider than the fret (5/32"). I expected this, if it was designed to cut various widths of fret wire then it should still work if the surface is sufficiently convex. But the cutting surface is so shallow and flat that it won't recrown this JUMBO fret at all! It's just lowering the flat as it files. Now, everything I've read has told me that the contact point where the string meets the fret should be very narrow after recrowning, to avoid buzzing and most importantly for accurate intonation. I measured the flat after all this, and it's still 5/64" wide. I highly doubt that all those professional fret levels leave a flat on the fret after they've recrowned that's more than a 16th of an inch wide. Especially on some of the widest fret wire available on the market today! If it's doing this now, I wouldn't want to get it anywhere near smaller frets. So it appears this crowning file isn't going to crown jack squat. It's absurdly wide and the cutting surface is too shallow and flat to recrown anything even close to the size of a fret wire. So am I missing something here, or is it time to see if I can send this back? Any information is appreciated.

If your results are good then there's the answer, but that seems like a really imprecise way to go about it. At least for a beginner like me; you're probably much more experienced at keeping even pressure on the frets with each stroke of the paper. It just seems to me that after using all these precision methods and tools to get a perfectly flat surface and a perfect little thin contact point on the top of the fret that simply hitting it with sandpaper and trying to keep things even by feel seems like a very fallible way to go about it, leaving a lot of room for human error. Whereas with the precision tools they remove at least some of the potential for mistakes. At least for someone just starting out like me, using sandpaper like that is somewhat intimidating. I shift my foot, lean the wrong way a little bit, or think of something that stresses me out and suddenly I've removed too much off the fret top and ruined the level and crown I just did.

I didn't get it from a store, just from some guy, an individual seller. Thanks for all the responses everybody. It's interesting that I got three different responses from three different people, each with their own suggestions and methods. Just like everything else in fretwork, there seems to be numerous ways of going about things.

Hello everyone, nice to be here. I've run across this site before and read some of the excellent tutorials from the main page, but I just never noticed there was a forum until a few weeks ago! First, I suppose I'll tell you all a little about myself as an introduction. I've been a musician since I was twelve, I'm now twenty five. Picked up guitar then, bass a couple years later, drums about the same time, then singing. I'm a multiinstrumentalist and am about the same skill level on all three (vocals a bit less). I played bass in a band for about six years, played some gigs, recorded two full length demo albums with about twelve songs each. Then the band split, and I went on my own. I liked playing in the band, but my real passion was always recording and writing. To that end, when the band split I started really focusing on recording. Over the course of about five years, I slowly built a home studio. I take care of my disabled wife for a living, and we live on a fixed income, so I've never had much money to work with. I also like to build and fix things, so I built as much as I could to save money. I learned all about acoustics and built acoustic absorption panels for my studio. I also chopped up my poor old Tama Rockstar drum set from the seventies and converted it to an electronic set using scrap plywood, Radio Shack and hardware store parts, and some seat cushion foam and paint stencils from Wal Mart. I also make my own cables out of Belden and Canare wire and Neutrik and Switchcraft connectors. Here's some pics of my studio and drum set if anyone is interested. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/E-set.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/Bassdrums.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/Basstrap4.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/Basstrap7.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/cbe701e9.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/30248322.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/c6b90acb.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/0b611d6e.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/36e43cb1.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpics/d0d6201e.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y42/MRpic...methodsmall.jpg As far as guitar work, I do all my own setups (intonation, truss rod adjustment, action), and I've installed many a replacement pickup. I've built a kit guitar or two. But what I've been wanting to do for a while now is get into doing my own fret work. The simple fact is that for someone like me who lives on a limited budget, cheap guitars are going to be what I see the most. And although you can get a lot more guitar for your money these days than you used to, fretwork is really where most manufacturors seem to cut corners on cheaper models. I currently own two electrics, one bass, and one acoustic. I've set them all up to be the best they can be, but I know at least some of them can be better. And of course, even the ones that don't need it now eventually will. Now, my tendency is to do a lot of research before I go diving into something, especially when it will cost money to get into it. So I've been doing a LOT of reading on fret leveling, basically anything I can find online, and I also own two very helpful books: Dan Erlewine's Guitar Player Repair Guide and Melvin Hiscock's Make Your Own Electric Guitar. Like anyone who starts learning about this, I found that there are almost as many methods to fret leveling as there are people who do it, so I had to do some choosing. On the one hand, there are those who use the most basic and simple of tools to do the job, and absolutely zero guitar specific tools. And they seem to do a great job. On the other hand, there's the very specific, precision, completely idiot proof tools that seem to be easier to use without messing up but are more expensive. Being that I was on a budget, yet also a beginner, I went as far up the idiot proof ladder as my funds allowed. Thus far, I have purchased these tools and supplies from three different sources: From Stew Mac: 1 18" precision straightedge (I know there are other sources, but not in my area, so I went for it) 1 Small fret end file 1 Sand stick with 400 and 600 grit bands 1 set of fret guards 1 rectangular rule (I can see this coming in handy all the time) 5 sheets 320 grit sandpaper 2 sheets 400 grit 2 sheets 600 grit 2 sheets 800 grit From ebay via a member here (I think he's called guitar guy here): Five 8" radius blocks in 9.5", 10", 12", 14", and 16" radii From ebay: 1 offset 300 grit diamond crowning file (looks identical to the Stew Mac on, with a buy it now of $40) I haven't recieved the radius blocks or the crowning file yet, they're on their way. I'm going to stick sandpaper to the radius blocks with double sided carpet tape. I already have masking tape and 0000 steel wool I already use for fret polishing. So you can see my method here. Set the neck straight, level with radius blocks and sandpaper, crown with the crowning file, reshape the fret ends if necessary and polish. I know everybody has their preferred methods, but after all the reading I did I decided this would be the easiest for me to get into fret leveling on my budget. I've never owned a guitar with a compound radius and in my budget range I don't see myself getting one, so for now the radius blocks should do the job just fine. So! After all that, we finally come to my actual question. (And if you read all that, give yourself a cookie. You've earned it!) I have a junk neck with fret damage that I'm using to mess around with (it could be salvaged by a refret so I'm being careful not to mess up anything but the frets themselves). I was curious about the kind of cut these sandpapers would have so I gave a fret a couple swipes with 800. Noticable scratching as you would imagine, a bit more that I expected really. So just out of curiosity, I used the rectangular rule to check three of the frets for flatness. No rocking, we're good. I then swiped one of the frets with the 800, and rechecked it. Now we got rocking. Now, in my reading I've run across many tutorials where people use sandpaper of this grit (and others) to polish the frets after leveling and recrowning. This was why I bought it. But after this little experiment, this procedure no longer makes sense to me. I mean no disrespect, and I'm not one to question conventional wisdom without reason, but if this grit of sandpaper is capable of altering the height of a fret with just a few swipes, why would anyone use it on a fret they just painstaking leveled and crowned? Aren't you just ruining the precision flat contact point you just worked to make? In Dan Erlewine's book, he specifically mentions using the sandpaper on the top of the leveled and crowned fret, not just on the sides. Even if someone was careful to use the same finger pressure and number of strokes on each fret, this seems like a really imprecise way to go about it. Another thing I tried was swiping the 320 grit on one fret and the 800 on another, then polishing them both with 0000 steel wool only. It seemed that they both polished up the same. Seeing as how my crowning file is going to be 300 grit and even the 800 grit paper seems to really cut through fretwire metal, I'm not sure what I'm really gaining by using extra abrasives on my frets after I level and crown them. So what am I missing here? Does everyone just sand the sides of their frets after leveling, being careful not to touch the contact point on top? If so, what's the preferred method for doing so? I have the sand stick, and I filed a notch into one side of it, but I don't think it would completely miss the top of the fret no matter how big I made the notch since the sandpaper will be stretched over the space in the notch anyway. Perhaps this is a stupid question, but if it is I couldn't find anyone else who's asked it in a LOT of searching. I read stuff on google, I've read a LOT of threads on here (I feel like I know some of you already), and anything else I could find, and it just doesn't make sense to me and I can't find any information on this specific question. I understand wanting to get the best polish you can on your frets, but if it means compromising the levelness of the frets then I don't really get it. Thanks in advance for any information anyone can give me, and if you've read ALL of this, give yourself one really big cookie.