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Prickly fret ends
http://mowrystrings.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10123&t=45360		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  JimO [ Sun Mar 15, 2015 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Prickly fret ends
One problem I seem to have is what I call prickly fret ends. I seat the frets with a press. Tap the ends with a fretting hammer. trim off the ends. File the ends with a file in a board at 45 degrees. Go over the ends with a 3 sided fret file. I still get sharp ends that catch my fingers. I keep going over them thinking I have them done but more show up.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

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Another is figuring out a good way to cut the slot for the mega switch. I dislike messing up a guitar top at this stage, LOL. I have a dremel. Tried a cut off wheel on a piece of scrap which just burned it. Hard to control too. How wide a slot should it be anyway?

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Otherwise it's coming along nicely. The Hotrod truss rod works like a charm. Adjusted it to sand the tops of the frets to level them up before crowning. Got almost all the hardware ready to go. bliss

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Author:  dzsmith [ Sun Mar 15, 2015 6:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Hey Jim,
When I bevel the frets, I file until I barely hit the edge of the board to ensure the fret is not beyond the edge of the board. After filing, I use a sanding block up to 600 grit to smooth everything out.
I use a small file to remove the sharp corners of the fret where it touches the board.
The corners are what I was feeling as prickly.
Sorry I could not get a better picture.
Dan
Your guitar is looking bad-ass!
Author:  JimO [ Sun Mar 15, 2015 8:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Thanks. It's gonna be an awesome axe. Have to try the sandpaper to finish it off. You fret ends aren't near ad beveled as mine. I must be overdoing it.
Author:  StevenWheeler [ Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:11 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Jim,

Clamp two blocks of wood to the top of your guitar 1/16" apart to guide a drill bit in a straight line. Drill a bunch of 1/16" holes along the switch line. Use the dremel abrasive wheel to connect the dots. Clean up the slot with a small file or some sandpaper wrapped around a thin piece of wood.

Steve
Author:  DennisK [ Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Fret in the winter when the board is as dry as it will ever be. And use a rectangular needle file with a safe edge to knock the sharp corners off the frets after beveling. 3 sided file can't get the right angle on them.

Or do what I've been doing lately: bound boards with semi-hemispherical fret ends, cut to width and shaped before installing. Then you can make the frets slightly narrower than the board to eliminate all snagability even when fretting in higher humidity. Plus there's no chance of scratching the neck/fingerboard anywhere when shaping the ends.
Author:  cphanna [ Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Hi, Jim, That's a very nice looking guitar you've got in process there!

The fret end texture can be a little tricky to master. I use a tapered, 4-sided file with a safe edge, too. My technique is something I picked up while watching Robert Benedetto's instructional series. I could show you more easily than I can describe it, but I give my little file three strokes on each fret corner, with the third stroke sort of rolling up towards the fret crown. It's like: One-two-roll. One-two-roll. I know that's a rather simplistic answer, but if you work at it a little bit, you'll get it. If you get distracted, it's easy to skip a corner, so a rough corner will occasionally show up even when I think I've finished. Then I do a final polish the full length of both sides of the neck with very fine sand paper wrapped around a rubber eraser.

As Dennis suggested, I do this in the driest conditions. In my case, I only build instruments in the winter and I do it as a hobby. This works for me, because I'm not really on any kind of schedule beyond my own eagerness to complete an instrument. I'm not set up to control the humidity in my basement shop, but I do monitor the humidity and save certain critical tasks for dry weeks in the shop. Fret end dressing is one of those tasks.

Regarding the bevel on your fret ends, I think that's largely a matter of preference. Most of the things I've read suggest a 30 degree bevel, but I know a lot of guys here prefer less angle. They like to leave the maximum possible playing surface on their fret tops--especially for players who do a lot of string bending and vibrato.

Steven Wheeler's suggestion for cutting the switch slot sounds as logical as any to me. I haven't been in that situation, so I'm not sure what I'd do for the slot.

Let us see some more pics of that cool guitar!
Author:  mechanix [ Mon Mar 16, 2015 4:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Hey jim the axe is looking real good. I had the same problem. What solved it for me was the microMesh metal polishing cloths after shaping and rounding. Started with the 1500 and just worked the sharp ends before polishing all frets through the grades to 12k. Leaves a super shiney and smooth fret end, or it did for me.
Author:  JimO [ Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Thanks All. Al lot of great ideas. There's so much to learn. But I'm getting there.
Author:  JimO [ Sat Mar 28, 2015 2:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Went over the neck and frets with 220 to 1500 grit sandpaper. Smooth as silk and no prickles. Yah! bliss

Thanks Steve for the idea on cutting the switch stop. Worked well.
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Started going at the TruOil.
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Author:  JimO [ Sat Mar 28, 2015 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Gotta post the boss. Keeping me on my toes. We finally have a G'kid close by.
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Author:  JimO [ Mon Mar 30, 2015 1:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Looky what I found: David Collins said on a post by Hesh about great fret work.

Fangs are a pet peeve of mine, and generally occur from using flush cutters to nip the fret right up against the board. This pinches the bottom corners of the crown in and down, were they end up embedded down in to the wood or binding in a way that cannot be dressed out without cutting in to the wood/binding.

There are several solutions. With bound boards where you are only trimming the crown with no tang to be concerned with, you can nip the ends with the blade parallel to the board. With unbound boards I find it best to simply keep the nippers at least .020-.030" away from the edge, and any fangs pinched down can be taken off in the final filing. In either case you of course have to be aware of the pressure/position of the cutter to minimize shock to the seated fret. Alternatively you can clip your frets to final length before installing, but they still need to be clipped long by the same amount so that any deformation from the cutters falls outside the edges of the board, left to be filed away after installation.

Then there's that little tiny bit of tang left visible on bound boards from tang that was either not trimmed or filed to a flush surface. That's another little detail I see missed far too often.
Author:  JimO [ Mon Mar 30, 2015 2:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Yep. That's exactly what I was doing. Clipping it as close to the fret board as I could.
Author:  Hesh [ Tue Mar 31, 2015 6:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Yesterday of the 8 guitars that I repaired.... most of them had proud fret ends. The reason why in these examples is that the instruments were partially dried out. More specifically our winter was terrible, record terrible again... with many months of sub-zero weather and a local population who is not accustomed to dealing with it. Folks are not humidifying their homes or guitars properly so the neck wood shrinks back a bit but the frets stay the same dimensions.

Hence the fret ends get proud and sharp and stick out. As such I would suspect that you may not have a stable RH (humidity) situation in your shop. It's far more critical for acoustic guitars, a must if you will to control RH pretty well when building but with electrics we can see issues too with the number one issue being proud fret ends.

As such I suspect that what you are seeing is a symptom of not controlling RH well in your shop and that should be addressed if you are going to continue to build of this issue will likely repeat. It's also likely that now in the rainy season this won't repeat until next winter without humidification.

Many if not most of our tools that we use we make ourselves because you just can't purchase what we want commercially. For fret ends we take a small, old, well worn Grobet OO file and break in half so it is only say 3.5" long. Then the remaining file, the front or end half has it's ends and sides safed and we may enlist an apprentice to sit at a vice all day long and file metal in further attempts to dull the file.... Seriously....

Once the file part is suitable we attach small wooden handles, mine are BRW :), and then the file is used to run up and down the fret ends AND break ever so slightly the fret board edge. We are not keen to do the radical bevel that we see on nearly every instrument today because this takes away valuable fret top real estate that better players like. It also encourages the strings to slide off the fret and in instances of poor fret work even get caught under a fret end.

I've posted pics of my files before here so perhaps they are in the thread that you dug up. Once the file is properly broken in it will skate on the finish not removing the finish but aggressively file off any metal fret ends which is perfect for that we are trying to do.

Nice looking ax too and I hope that something here is useful to you.
Author:  JimO [ Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Prickly fret ends
Thanks for your words of wisdom Hesh.

My shop is basically wide open. I stuffed fiberglass in the rafter openings for the winter and have a sliding door on it. It's great for these Georgia summers but not good for humidity control. When I get to working on frets and such I bring them inside to acclimate to indoor humidity. All of my factory guitars and my P bass has never given me a problem, just an issue with ones I've built.

Not too bad and I'm getting a handle on it. My latest one I sanded the tarnation out of the fret ends and the neck. Got it silky smooth. In fact I had applied 2 coats of TruOil and it felt rough and some scratch marks showed up. So I resanded it with 220, 320, 400 and 600 grits. Applied 2 more coats so far and it is silky smooth. Learned something new.
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