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I don't know why given that I was building a D-28 clone at the time myself, but last year I paid a repair shop to refret my Les Paul while they were doing a headstock repair.

I guess I know a whole lot more now than I did back then but I'm kicking myself for not looking more closely at the job before signing off on it. The fact that the guy had left glue marks on the fretboard should have been a warning sign.

To summarise, the crowns were completely flat and still had file marks all over them, the ends were really roughly finished, and as it turns out nearly all the frets were sitting on a shelf of glue. The frets weren't properly radiused. This combined with some shocking tang trimming meant they stuck up at the ends, which he addressed with epoxy to fill the gaps, and on one fret he even glued in some scrap tang material to fill it!!!

Despite this bodgery, you could still get a scalpel blade under the fret ends.

Due to the ends sticking up and very poor reprofiling, the frets were way wider at the ends than in the middle.

The good thing to come out of this is as an amateur luthier I have now been forced to learn how to do a Les Paul refret which I started tonight. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing how good i can get it.

One final shocker was the pictured fret I removed. I'm not even sure how the tang was possible with this one...




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It honestly looks like it was his first go at doing fretwork.

I mean... Just the fact that the frets were dead flat with no radius across the fretboard, he didn't recrown them, and the fret ends stick *way* out of the board should be some sort of hint.

On the good side.... At least he didn't scratch up your neck and fretboard real bad doing that....

That's terrible work, perhaps the worst I have ever seen.

Ask for a full refund.

It also looks like the fret ends were messed with.... off the guitar and then installed. There are also fractures in the binding at every fret location.....

I'm curious how does the headstock repair look?

Meh! Who plays above the 12t fret anyways.


Seriously, that's horrible work.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Did the guy recycle old frets?

Initially it was invisible but since it has settled you can see it again. It just needs flatting off. Paint is this guy's forte, headstock repairs in particular but he was a nightmare to deal with. I'm also annoyed that he convinced me into refinishing the neck in polyeurethane rather than nitro. When I first taped up the fretboard to see if I could rescue the fretwork the tape pulled his lacquer off!!! Nice keying there, buddy. Maybe at some stage I'll pluck up the courage to blow some nitro over it.

The new frets are now in waiting to be levelled and crowned. The board was of course not flat and not a uniform 12". I bought a Stewmac 18" sanding beam for the job and am sure glad i did. Already the fretwork is looking a million times better. Depressing given that this is only the 3rd guitar I have fretted!!

Well look at the bright side, you could close your eyes and redo it with a sledgehammer and you couldn't do any worse. That is horrible work.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

It's got like a rustic, homey feel to it, like something your dad would do for you. "Here ya go son, good as new!"

Haha - Honestly, my Dad is an artist so would have never delivered this, but my Grandpa was a big fan of rivets...

I hope you asked for a refund...

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

Wow, if it was my guitar, I would have wept.
My condolences.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I have never seen one remotely that bad! Kind of looks like a nearsighted beaver worked on it,
Mike

If someone did that to one of my gits, I'd be in jail the next day.

Fretwork. If it were easy, my phone wouldn't be ringing near as much.

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

This is my subsequent refret. I might revisit the ends to neaten them further at some stage but even when the action was crazy low there were no buzzes or choking. It feels great too, especially given the recent history of the frets.

What do you guys use on newly levelled rosewood boards? Lemon oil seems to be the general consensus.


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Howard's Feed and Wax

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I used to use "lemon oil" but the Howards Feed and Wax seems to penetrate better. I used it on my cocobolo martial arts weapons and it penetrated where others wouldn't.

We use Howards too in our commercial repair business and have for over ten years now. Great stuff, really pops the beauty of wood, bridges, truss rod covers (wood ones, not pl*stic....), etc.

Howards also is good to lightly wax boards with before running a bead of thin CA next to a fret and then clamping it with the Jaws II tool. The Howards helps the excess CA wipe off the board perfectly clean.

Wow... That fret job looked quite awful. It doesn't come as such a surprise to me, since I know of at least two "repairmen" in my region that do similar work. You think they'd eventually learn to do it right... Your refret looks infinitely better. The ends look a little funny to me, but at least they're seated well. I think you got a little carried away with faceting the ends. If the ends are properly beveled and nicely seated, it's only necessary to slightly soften the contours of the fret ends in such a way that they all look neat and uniform. Looks to me like you removed too much material.

That said, congratulations on turning a guitar that was horribly mutilated into a functional instrument again!

Not exactly.... It's true all you need is beveled ends with softened corners, but a good craftsmen can round the end of the fret to a hemispherical shape. It's bragging - "Look how good I am!". I say WELL DONE.

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

The hemispherical thing always looked a little funny to me, so I've never tried it. Of course, the true test of a good fret job is, does it play and bend without choking or dead notes with the action set to 1/32" and 3/64"? (FWIW I wouldn't leave it that low unless the customer insists that they want it like that)

Is it okay for the bead of the fret to be sitting atop the waxed fingerboard? Seems like thin CA would still wick right under it and do its job, but I've not tried this method. Also, how do you apply the wax so that it doesn't penetrate into the slots? My concern obviously is contaminating the slots, so I've been reluctant to experiment with applying any products that might interfere with the glue bond. Any other insight on your procedure would be appreciated. For over two decades I've been using tape to protect the board from excess CA, and now I'm wondering if I've been doing it the hard way all this time...

It's easy to apply the wax without getting it in the slots, just use a light application. The CA wicks in just fine with no problems. In the interest of full disclosure I admit that I learned this technique (and a bunch of other good stuff) at Ann Arbor Guitars from Dave and Hesh.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Christopher we are going to disagree on a number of things that you said but no biggie, to each their own.

For example simply beveling is not good enough.... Many pro players want to take advantage of valuable fret top surface real estate. Radical or even the level of beveling that we see from major manufacturers is often an issue for these folks.

We've done many refrets for this reason including the example of the greaseball weekend wedding player who wants a refret because the last Luthier who fretted his guitar over beveled the ends. I've shared this real life example on this forum several times now.

I share some of these stories because to me custom building guitars is not simply attempting to mimic the piss poor practices of f*ctories but is instead our opportunity to take it to new and more appreciated levels.

Do you know why beveling began? It became a standard practice of f*ctories to avoid the costs associated with semi-skilled labor to shape fret ends. Or, in other words, it's a cheap and ineffective alternative to taking fret work seriously.... Slotted bridge pins are the same thing, a cheap way to avoid semi-skilled labor to slot the bridge, top, and plate..... This is also why nut slots are NEVER cut well from the f*ctory.... Because it would require a higher level of craftsmanship that of course costs more.... money....

I'm not a fan of semi hemispherical fret ends either believing it to be a fad with little practical value. What I do want is very little bevel and nicely shaped fret ends that are not at all sharp. That's my goal. You will find that there are MANY ways to accomplish what I speak of including semi hemispherical fret ends, which I have done, but don't see the value in it beyond nicely shaped, not sharp, not radically beveled fret ends.

Howards is applied very lightly, excess is wiped off in the direction that the frets point, not up against them, and then allowed to dry for a few minutes. It works great. Accelerator is sprayed in the direction that will not contaminate the next slot to be done since you asked for more detail.

We do a lot of fret work at the level of being on the cusp.... of making a PLEK work economically speaking. We also teach this several times a year and some of our students are Luthiers who have been pros for some time.

Back to fret ends. There are many styles of ends and one is not necessarily better than another. It's just what it is and if it qualifies against my standard, are they comfortable, functional, show deliberateness of craftsmanship and I'm happy.

There is a LOT of really bad work out there. Folks who hang out a shingle and don't have a clue what professional standards really are. It's an occupational hazard of Lutherie because until Al Gore invented the Internet.... many of us never got out much....

Thanks all for your kind words! In preparation for this job (bearing in mind I am but a weekend warrior) I watched a load of related YouTube videos. One that resonated with me was the Crimson Guitars series where Ben Crowe refrets Kelly Jones' SG.

This is where the inspiration to try rounding the fret ends came from. When I fretted my acoustic I just lightly beveled the edges, but I just wanted to try something a bit different with this one.

I was also using a Crimson Guitars fret end file to do the job so though it only fitting to use their technique

Nice tool incidentally.

Even though the ends are very rounded, the profiling never enters the playing area of the fret.

All of the above being said, I probably did go a little far with them. Once I've tidied them up a bit more (turns out I need more light when fretting!) I think it will look fine. And if I decide down the line that I don't like it, I'll just whip 'em out again! At least now they're seated neatly with minimal CA (my new best friend) rather than a lake of epoxy, so the clean up should be minimal.


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