Red Special Build - PT11 Frets
Part 01 - Blockboard Sandwich - • Red Special build - PT01 - Blockboard sand...
Part 02 - CNC Body - • Red Special build - PT02 - CNC Body Cuts
Part 03 - CNC Neck - • Red Special build - PT03 - CNC Neck
Part 04 - Body Glue Up - • Red Special Build - PT04 - Body Glue Up
Part 05 - Router Bearing Repair - • Red Special Build - PT05 Repairs - Router ...
Part 06 - Applying Veneers - • Red Special Build - PT06 - Applying Veneers
Part 07 - Binding and Staining - • Red Special Build - PT07 - Binding and Stain
Part 08 - Veneer Sand Through Repair - • Red Special Build - PT08 Repair - Veneer S...
Part 09 - Neck and Fingerboard - • Red Special Build - PT09 Neck and fingerboard
Part 10 - Neck finishing - • Red Special Build - PT10 Neck Finishing
Part 11 - Frets - • Red Special Build - PT11 Frets
Part 12 - Assembly - • Red Special Build - PT12 Assembly
Part 13 - Demo - • Red Special Build - PT13 Demo
: : : Frets : : :
Frets! This was one of the jobs I was dreading. There was a lot of build up to how difficult they are to get right. I watched a lot of videos of other people doing it, I read a fretting book, and asked endless questions of people like Mark Reynolds, Jonathan David Griffin, and Doug Short. I eventually did a few tests and got the nerve to start in!
The first decision to make was fret wire. I studied photos of the original, I scoured other people's build info, did measurements and calculations in photoshop and asked more questions. In the end, I settled on what seemed to me to be the best of all possible worlds. As this was my first ever guitar build, I wanted to have decent height in my fret wire in case I needed to level and re-crown them a few times trying to get it right, but I was mainly looking at the aesthetic. As a player, I don't have a fret preference. I like picking up a guitar and working within it's individual parameters, rather than modifying it to suit me. So for this build, I didn't let myself get influenced by what I like or what other people were using. I looked at things like the spacing of the dots between the frets, particularly at the 24th fret. Not too wide, not too skinny. The Goldilocks fret!
I bought 4 sets of fret wire to experiment with. I decided on the StewMac Medium/Higher 0152 fret wire. It has a 2.34mm wide crown, 1.22mm tall, and the tang goes 1.57mm deep. It also happens to be "Dan Erlewine's favorite fret wire!", whose videos I watch constantly. I used 3 lengths to complete the full guitar.
Because of the lacquered fingerboard, I was hesitant to want to pound the frets in with a hammer, so I used a fret press caul. It's a normal fret caul that fits in a drill press chuck and allows you to, more or less, smoothly press in the frets. I also used Titebond wood glue to help hold the frets and fill in any excess space in the fret slot. I had decent success with this method. I occasionally found that I needed to pulse downward pressure on the caul to help squeeze the glue out so the fret would seat properly, or move the caul to one side to help push the edge down. I should also say, I bought this item on eBay, rather than through StewMac, thus cutting the price in half. However, I can't speak the to the exact ratio of disparity in quality between the two products.
Once they were seated and the edges nipped, I used a set of borrowed StewMac tools to finish them off. I filed the fret ends with a 6" fret file, then leveled all the frets using the same 7.25" radius sanding block I used to radius the fret board. I applied Sharpie to the tops of the frets and sanded with 500grit paper (applied with double stick tape) until the Sharpie JUST disappeared off the tops of the frets. I did a rough re-crowning with concave files using Sharpie yet again to distinguish the middle of the top of the fret I just leveled, restrung the guitar and checked the action. Once I was happy, I polished the frets with micro-mesh pads and cleaned up the ends with a small end file. Lots of tape was used to to try and avoid scratching the finish as much as possible... but it was unavoidable at some points. Let me just make a final note about manually polishing frets... it is hellish on the hands!
In the end, the fret job, amazingly, turned out ok! I had to do some adjusting to my action through various methods... sanding the tenon and adding or taking away shims, but it's playable now! Getting so near the end!!!
Big thanks to Doug Short for our seemingly unending collaboration on this build. Check out his build and lots more info here: dsgb.net
Music: "{none}" by Smokescreen. (My old band)