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As promised and once again.... posting some pics of my fret end files. The idea for these came from Dave Collins and this is my set.

We make these like most of the tools we use. The smaller one is about 3" and started life as a OOO file that was intentionally dulled on brass for a while. The file was heated and broken in half to the size you see here.

I glued mine to a BRW handle with Bob Smith's Slow CA and no accelerator. The one pictured has been used on hundreds of refrets, fret dresses and the all too common in our climate fret sprout.

The beauty of the things is once the file is prepared well it will skate on finish and not bite into it but if it hits a fret end it takes off material. So I use the smaller one and take things absolutely flush as the final step before shaping my fret ends with other files and methods.

The larger one is more aggressive and I made it for stainless wire and I'm glad I did. It takes off more material faster and when I get close to flush I switch to the one with the BRW handle. I think they are 3" and 4" respectively.

Speaking of flush one of the most common things Luthiers who work in the trade do is tilt up a headstock and sight down the treble and then the bass side. We are looking at relief, hopefully... When the frets terminate all over the place and look like what J. Giles described as Goober Gober with the green teeth it's more difficult for my brain to see the straightness or not of the neck. By having all fret ends flush the neck geometry shines through and I can do my work easier.

Now to jump into another topic Brad's fret end bevel angle thread we do our angles free form by hand with these files. You can hold them in such a manner that as you move up and down the neck your angle does not change or change noticeably. No jigs required for setting the fret end angle.

By the way the fret end bevel angle has to also be a function of the neck shape to some degree. For example if the fret board edge is sharp and close to 90 degrees you may want a tad more bevel. If for example the fret board edges are over beveled and rounded like 40's, 50's and 60's Gibsons can be you have to match what is there and that's simply done by holding these at a different angle.

Easy peazy hope this helps Pierre since he asked for this and others. If you share this idea please credit Dave? Thanks

Machinists use such files for fixing high spots in tooling exactly for the reason you mention. They will bite into any proud metals, and glide right over any level surface without marking it. The edges are ground off smooth just as yours have been. The term for such a file is a "safed" file. I have a couple that I made back in the 70's from broken and worn files. I never made handles for them, however.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks, Hesh!


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

Why heated?

That's what I was wondering too. Files are very hard and brittle. Stick it in a vice and tap it with a hammer and it breaks easily. Heating can only make it tempered which is less brittle and more resistant to breaking.

Thanks Chris that's the next step with these to "safe" them and if anyone wants I can try to get some closeups of mine showing this. The safing on the leading edge permits it to ski over a proud fret end (to some extent) and then have the teeth bite that sucker.

We safe on the belt sander with dust collector turned off and a charged fire extinguisher in site and near by. Sparks ya know.

IIRC he scored the file in the middle where he wanted it to break, heated it a bit and then slapped it on something and it breaks in half. These come from the hardware store twice or more longer than what you see.

This was 18 years ago the memory I am working from so I'll ask Dave tomorrow when I'm in the shop. Took the day off today it's my 92 year old blind Mom's 92nd birthday so I took the day off to go see her.

Yeah you and Eric may be right I'll be checking as indicated above I may be wrong here on the heating.

The files need for strength and to not be brittle does go away when a full backing handle like this is installed but again I may have it wrong, more to come.

But the real value in these for everyone here is they make all your frets all perfectly aligned and they also take down fret sprout like no one's business. We charge $20 more for Hesh to take the fret sprout down and the BRW one you see has likely done well over 1,000 instruments in 15 years at our high volume. In the spring I often carry this one in my pocket at work it gets used so much.

PS: When I snug up frets and take down sprout I also usually it the fret end edges with the SM fret file 3 - 5 times and take any sharp edges and fangs out. Probably a 5 - 10 minute operation for me these days.

More to come

Thanks Hesh. Just to clarify because file tooth naming conventions vary around the world … I’m familiar with a 00 file, which I think is the coarsest in the Swiss naming system. Over here in Australia commonly files are classified “b*stard”, “2nd cut” and “smooth” from coarsest to finest cut. I haven’t come across a “000” file in any nomenclature but perhaps nits a US thing or elsewhere in Europe that I am unfamiliar with - is 000 a coarse or fine cut?

Josh the files we use are the ones real hardware stores keep in drawers and there is no packaging. I'll ask Dave about the OOO designation but what I speak of is a very benign file with a very fine cut that we further dull purposely. I'll get back to ya, off today so Wed.

Before Dave took up Lutherie he was a trained machinist and then he went to the Galloup school and after being a student there he stayed on for five years as a teacher. During that time he built around 200 guitars including many of the prototypes for a current brand out there. Then he worked at Elderly where TJ Thompson and other notables worked over the years.

Anyway my point is he's a machinist and that's his approach to Lutherie too. Surface plates and measurements in .001". When ever a guitar has a stripped out strap button he jumps on the micro lathe and cuts a matching material plug. You two would get on very well talking shop since you both came at this from being a machinist. I think a mill is again in our future too, we used to have one and it's time for another.

I'm in for those close-ups. My brother-in-law’s a machinist too so I'll put him to work.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

OK They started life as 00 mill bastards, small ones these are the original width in the pic. Or, in other words you want very fine files.

Dave does not heat them, I was wrong, r o n g.... he grinds a groove in them and then smacks them on something to break them to size at the groove.

Who knew that the rotten sobs lived at the mill!

We get ours from the bulk file drawers at the hardware store and he added be sure to sight them all and only buy ones that are super straight and not warped.

Good luck finding a store like that these days. Not around here, anyway.

We still have some Mom and pop hardware stores and they are the best but you're right getting harder and harder to find.

I remember being able to go to Rona and they’d have boxes of the Nicholson’s to sort through to find the straight ones. Now they’re all individually theft protection packaged and you can’t really tell…

Wichita being an aircraft town I used to buy all my files used at Boeing Surplus Store for $1 per pound. Most would be filthy, or covered in zinc phosphate (a dayglo green aircraft primer). Later they wised up and charged a dollar per file. I made up full sets of die sinker files for all my buddies out of the stuff I didn't keep. We are talking good name brands, and the broken or worn stuff could be ground down and turned into spatulas for spreading glues of all kinds, fillers, and the like. I even got some vixen files which make dandy tools for roughing out body shapes on solid guitars. Auto body shops used these years ago to smooth leaded panels when repairing accident damage. They can be tensioned to cut concave or convex surfaces. I love files - that's why I have so many.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks Hesh!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ok here are some shot to show the safing that we do to the file edges and the bit of a ramp on the leading and trailing edges.

Used this file twice just this morning on fret sprout - gone!

Thanks Hesh. You’ve motivated me to upgrade - I’ve been doing all these operations just hand holding the flat file but the ergonomics of that are getting tiresome.

Checked my file draw yesterday and found a nice blunt mill bastard. Time to make some handles.

Check and see which side is the flattest...

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

When building I love the Stew Mac sanding beam to accomplish this task. When you sight down the edge as mentioned it's perfect the whole length. I do the angle free hand too.

Nice looking files HEsh.

Good and they hold nicely. I used unused fingers as training wheels of sorts to keel my hand at the same angle as I move up and down the side of the fret board. You will feel (and hear) the file bite on metal and then a few swipes later no snagging, no metal sound and it just skates on finish.

Be sure to wear the file down though and test on scrap too.

I never thought of that but see the value now that you said it. Good idea Chris, thanks.

That's a good idea too thanks JF. The beams are great for all manner of stuff I use mine which are not SM we make our own I use mine for sanding the bottom of a saddle, saddle sides, nut bottoms and lots of stuff that a mini surface plate would be useful.