Refret on vintage Framus

[Dan Bombliss]

Some of you know that I'm attending the guitar building/repair program at Minnesota State Southeast Tech in Red Wing. So far it's an amazing program with alot of information and great instructors. Just coming up to the tail end of the electric setup and fretwork section and I'll be switching over to acoustic setups (Making nuts, bridges, saddles) along with acoustic neck resets.

Anyhow, with fretwork being about done and I'm finished with the 5 fret jobs on a mock up board that is required for the grade, I'm taking on a real guitar while I still have time and help available. So, seeing as how I have an old framus that was in desperate need of a refret here's a couple pictures of my progress from today.

Here's the guitar it's self after I removed the frets and fixed the flaws in the fingerboard. There was a pretty drastic rise in tongue at the end of the fingerboard and with all the finger wear in the board from years of playing, it's now a consistent 20" radius again. Since it's a 1 way trussrod, I adjust the tension in the trussrod to be about .04-.06" backbow and then sanded it level, so that there is leeway either way, I can loosen or tighten the rod and get movement I need.



Here's just an overview a bit closer up to the board



This picture just shows the tang being clipped back just slightly so that it won't stick out from the side and I won't have to risk gouging the laquer up trying to cut it back. The stewmac tang nipper is an awesome tool! Haha.



Well, that's all for now, I'll post more of the guitar when it's finished or closer to finished. Once the frets are in I still have to shim the neck because the angles way off, and then set it up. Should be a good player here shortly!

-Dan

[Ken Hundley]

Yeah, the fret tang nipper does a good job! I got the cheapy that I modified, and haven't used it since I modified it, not having made any fretted fingerboards lately. Your cuts look good and precise! Keep it up!

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Dang Dan,
You are really learning lutherie stuff there!! :>)
How great is that! If I could do it over again, I would be famous right now with at least 3 Sjostrand guitar factories around the country.
Thanks for sharing your work.

Kevin

[Dan Bombliss]

I finished this guitar up last week, but I've been busy so I hadn't had the time to upload the pictures. I only snapped off 2 more pictures of this guitar and all of these are taken on my blackberry so quality isn't very good.

I got all the frets set in there. They went fairly smooth aside from a couple spots where I could get a 0.0015" feeler gauge in under them. Since they had gone in pretty smoothly leveling and crowning was a breeze.


Here's the guitar fully strung up. After I finished the refret I had to shim the neck because the neck angle was so far off. It was swept up so high that a straight edge wasn't even close to clearing the pickups. Got it shimmed up to where it needed to be then did a full setup and got it intonated. I went with taller frets so the guitar plays like a dream, although it takes some getting used to, to not press so hard as to make the intonation off. Pretty low action, zero buzzes. This old framus is no longer hurting as badly as it was, but there's still some problems with some of the wiring, I took off a plate and noticed a ground wire was about to break off, if it hasn't already, and I'm sure that's not all of it. The pickups work, and it plugs in and plays fine, but I believe certain combinations of the switches doesn't work because of the wiring. When I get time I plan to play with that and get it all sorted out.


-Dan

[Dan Bombliss]

P.s

Kevin, If you had had 3 factories in the US, your guitars would have probably been the name brand I'd have been saving up for to be able to play on! :P