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Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 4:30 pm
by Danl8
ruby@magpage.com wrote:Thanks

Turns out a couple of frets need pulling and resetting and, as usual, I have to stare at something that needs repair for quite a while before I can get off my butt to do it.

Ed
That's one heck of a familiar sentiment. :-)

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 9:24 pm
by Guitar Goomba
I know that feeling all too well.

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:27 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
Here it is a month later and I have been staring at my fret job for all that time - 12 of the 19 did not sit down properly, mostly in the centers. I decided I will have to redo them, and I need to take them all out so I can resurface the whole fretboard easily. Any ideas would be welcome. A possibility is that I re-cut the frets after the abalone strips were on, so they may too wide and I didn't hold them in place til the glue set.


1) My daughter gave me a tip - to help with chipping on an ebony board, run a sharp knife down both sides so that any chipping is contained under the fret. Here is an Exacto #11 doing its thing

2) I altered my soldering gun by clipping off the center of the "bit'" and bending the arms outward so they are as wide apart as most of my shortest fret. I then filed a groove in the ends so they rest on the fret crowns. Pull the trigger and about 10 seconds later the HHG I used is burned off

3) Then I use my fret pullers - an end nipper I ground the top off of to bring the cutting edges right up to the surface. The frets pop right out

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:33 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) Once the HHG has cooled I used my thinned-down linoleum knife to clean out the grooves

2) I don't know why the problem happened, but I found a couple with the tang a little close to the edge of the binding, so I filed them back a bit

3) The knife technique kept the chipping close under the fret crown.

Why do I have so much chipping? Is it the glue in the slot? Ideas? Again, a possibility is that I re-cut the frets after the abalone strips were on, so they may too wide and I didn't hold them in place til the glue set.

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:40 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
Finally putting it back together - I have spent a lot of time putting this of

1) After speaking with my daughter, she convinced me to use medium viscosity CA. Her experience with it is that it sits in the groove and when you squeeze in the fret, the pressure activates the glue

2) Settle the fret in and move it side-to-side

3) Tap it with my polished cobbler's hammer with blue tape on the surface

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:47 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) Clamp it with a hardwood (jatoba) caul with the 16" radius cut into it and let it sit. My daughter said perhaps 5 minutes so I am overcompensating with an hour

2) Tape off the fretboard, mark high frets with the fret rocker, the slowly file down high areas, checking frequently with the rocker and a longer straight edge. Then lightly file with a flat file (not all are flat)

3) Use a 3 corner file with the edges ground smooth to shape the sides and ends of the flattened frets

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:50 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) Then a crowning file to round things off

2) Then 600 grit, a couple of sanding screens to 4000, then 0000 steel wool - nice and polished

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:54 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) At last!! The finish I should have started a month and a half ago. I am using MinWax Wipe-On Poly after John Hall tried and liked it.

2) 4 coats to start - I am afraid of sanding through. I am using well-worn cotton dishtowels and they make application easy. After an overnight drying, level with 320 wet/dry used wet. Didn't think to soak it overnight, but am doing that now

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 2:23 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) Clamp it to level the sides - wet sanding. I like that big brown eraser as a sanding block because it is firm but not rigid, and less likely to sand a spot in a dome or a convex curve

2) 4 coats, then level, 3 coats, then level, then 2 coats and finish after a week of curing

Re: Yellow Cedar L-1

Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 2:31 pm
by ruby@magpage.com
1) Make a nut. I forgot to take a picture of marking it - I install the nut, and run my sharp half pencil over the the first couple of frets to mark where a zero fret would be on the nut. This is the bottom of the half pencil

2) Here is the half pencil from the side

3) Christmas gift from my daughter - a StewMac nut rule that spaces the strings ever-so-slightly farther apart to compensate for string size. Mark with an .03 pencil through the slots