Fretwork: Levelling, Crowning, and Polishing

Herein explains my process for ensuring high quality playability of your instrument through fretwork.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• frets
• fretwork
• fret
• level
• crown
• polish

[demilieu]

a lot of guitars i see these days don't have any crown on the fret, just the original radius of the fret that got pushed into the board. especially in the low end guitars from asia. some play quite well but others feel scratchy when you play, even though the frets look clean and smooth enough. refretting looks easy to do but it's really very hard for an amateur to get a good playing board. unless you have a lot of experience doing it, i'd leave it to a professional.

[verhoevc]

@demilieu That's the point of this... to help people learn and become a professional. Also, if you look at my other videos my audience, often, is people making their own guitars; not upgrading imports. Professional or not there's no reason not to try. The VERY worst case scenario is you screw up the frets (beyond repair would be HARD) and have to pay for a re-fret... which you would have done anyways if you had gone straight 'to a professional.' Give it a go, you'll be amazed by what YOU can do.

[milance2111]

in what condition was the trust rod before you hammer in fretwire.so my cuestion is does are you fretboard was perfectly flat befeore hamering on frets?

[verhoevc]

@milance2111 It doesn't matter what your neck is doing when you push in the frets....

The fret only covers such a small area of the board and if pushed correctly will always go all the way down til they hit solid wood and seat. I generally don't even check what the neck is doing when I fret. The neck only needs to be perfectly flat when doing the stuff you see here in this video and when sanding the fretboard BEFORE fretting.

[nickseckler]

How did you get into luthiery? Did you go to school for it?

[verhoevc]

@nickseckler Nope. Took a high school woodshop class and insisted on building one. Well that failed miserably. So then when I was on my own in college I bought a minimal amount of tools and gave it a go again. It's all up hill from there. You can follow said college build, my first finished guitar, in a how-to eBook on building with minimal tools on my site at muxguitars com

[usalespaul59]

@demilieu thanks for your help man! I don't think there is any problem with the nut, I have just set the strings pretty low and the guitar plays OK apart from this buzz on the open strings (only D and G), so I think they are a bit too high... should I sand them a bit with a file...? It is a 59 Gibson historic LP...

[demilieu]

@usalespaul59 buzzing at an open string...it sounds like maybe the slots in the nut are cut too deep; this can, at least temporarily, be fixed using super glue to rebuild the nut at those points. other than that, maybe the frets need to be tapped in more? use a hammer but also soft wood on top of the fret otherwise the hammer will scratch and damage the frets. finally, a pro can change out 2 frets and it won't cost much to do. i always go with the least invasive first and hope for the best.

[usalespaul59]

Do you necessarily need to have the nut off? On my guitar the first 2 frets need to be reduced in hight (the other ones having been used more a shorter, the guitar plays fine, but OPEN strings buzz a bit, due to high 1st fret). Thanks!

[woznotstoz]

@milance2111 If your neck is not level when strings are removed, then I would probably adjust the rod so that it is level before you start to fret the board.. Because you will use the truss rod to counter-act the string tension on the neck, you want your neck to be straight.

If you are making your own guitar then you generally dont have the truss rod adjusted when you fret the neck, and if you have made the neck right, it should be perfectly level..

[milance2111]

@verhoevc and a forget thanks for the answers,you helping me a lot.

[milance2111]

@verhoevc ok,ok thats the answer i was expect,one more question,you cut a slot for the frets,after you flaten the finger board,what is happening with the trust rod (lets say its a two way hot rod)is it trus rod completely loose?And whats better, Fret/Fingerboard Leveler that has length same as neck or sorter