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Recently I picked up the fret tang remover from Jescar along with some narrow wire for ukes. I had the opportunity to fret two boards with it today. Generally speaking it's a nice tool and easy to use. The two problems I did have were with the wire being already radiused and with the guide on the tool itself.

The wire was radiused to 16" to match the board. I was using the #1 guide attachment. The wire would get slightly kinked right at the inside edge of the cut area because the wire was radiused and not sitting flat in the guide for the full width. I also noticed that the guide was just slightly bigger than the wire so I would have to adjust the wire a bit on each cut to get a clean shave off of just the tang.

Doing some test cuts I had significantly better and consistent results with flat wire.

Some questions:

1) Is it common to put the fretboard on flat? This would make the job a lot easier with the nipper.

2) Is it common to use the thinnest jescar wire or do you guys like to use medium guitar wire instead to make jumbo Uke wire?

3) Anyone have experience with this cutter and can lend some technique advice or confirm what I'm experiencing?

Thanks!
Brad


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http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=48050&hilit=fret+nippers

The search for the perfect nipper goes on.
The Jescars at least seem to handle stainless. Every time I use them I think about grinding off 75% of the shelf to accommodate wire radius better. It's a lot of hard steel to remove and so far I haven't taken the time. My stew macs just won't fit really big wire.

Never met a tool I didn't need to modify.

The smallest radius I've done is 20", which is enough to piss you off, but also enough for the player to feel. I've done it once. No comment on radiusing ukulele fretboards, and moreso doing a bound one with small fretwire that no current nipper exists. There are other ways to trim fretwire, but that's another thread.

I use the equivalent of StewMac 147 on my tenors. No issues with the Hosco nipper, and certainly none when I stepped up to the Summit. I do use the 764 for recent Tiples, and had the expected issues of trimming smaller wire.

Note: even though my fretboards are flat, I radius the wire.

Add 1: Radiused fretboards on ukulele are the exception, and not the norm, and you'll see custom builders do it, but the factories don't (except customs, I'm sure)

My fret boards are a 12" - 16" compound radius. I use them on SM #764wire that has been rolled. My binding is just 2mm and I only try to nip just over 2mm on that wire. Any more and it doesn't work to well.

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
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Cairns, Australia