Ken Nagy wrote:
The .08 X .037 wire is 6 feet of Jescar in 8" lengths. I might as well use it. I'll have to be sure that the fretboard is right, there isn't a lot on top to fix a sloppy fretboard.
A flat beam. Sounds easy? It isn't. Even the bases for a couple of dial depth gauges at work aren't flat, and they're supposed to be gauges! You would think that they could grind 6" within a tenth or so, not a thou. What people don't understand is that the machines doing that have to be of even greater precision. The surface grinder at work is old, and good enough for some things; but dead flat. No. Not even close. Even after grinding the magnet.
Lapping is an option. It is almost a lost art, but could be done with a suitable beam of metal, a scraper, and a sheet of glass. The beam shouldn't bend, so square tubing, or I beams would work. Flat stock stiff enough to not bend would be too heavy to use. For the time involved, $60 for a flat piece of metal is a bargain. Save lapping for a joining plane.
If it isn't flat why do they even sell it? Yeah, I know to make money, but don't they have a conscience?
I like the way the offset z file from StewMac looks. You'd end up with two facets on each side that would blend together. At least that's the way it seems. Less contact points on bot sides sounds like it would go very fast.
Do the diamonds hold up? I haven't found diamond card sharpeners to my liking. Diamond 3m paper is good, but you keep moving to different sections when they wear.
On the other hand, those fret erasers look like they would work great. They would wear away like rubber wheels on a chop saw, revealing fresh grit. It seems like a coarse grit would round those facets right out, and a 1000 grit would almost polish.
What do you guys use to polish frets?
Any thoughts on this so far?
Hah, I'm a dead man walking.
Ken you might want to limit your questions a bit at a time, there is a lot that you are asking here making it difficult to comment thoughtfully without writing War and Peace.
Our leveling beams are lapped on a calibrated surface plate. I have no idea what you have at work and wonder why this matters in respect to the questions that you originally asked. We've also worked with some leveling beams from Stew Mac and an eBay vendor who is a member here and they were all pretty flat. We lap our beams to have less than .0005" of error over the span of 18", 12", 9" and 6". We have longer beams for basses too. And yes it does take time, so does building a quality instrument.
For acoustic guitars the level of precision that I speak of and we do at our shop is likely overkill for someone playing bluegrass with 13's on a D-28 with action of 5/64th" and 7/64th" at the 12th. For the A-list shredder who wants action of 2 and 3 it's the only way to get there short of a PLEK operated correctly with a skilled operator not doing mass production where the instrument can spend some time on the machine.
We were offered a PLEK for free and declined believing that our hand methods based on machinist principals are equal or superior.
We bought and tried the offset Z files and don't like them. We no longer attempt to use them and default to the older style diamond files.
Is it worth it? For you if you make 2 - 3 guitars maybe not. For us we can use a single file for several hundred fret dresses and they still work great. Diamond files cut in both directions and don't chatter, all good stuff. If I amortize my $79 diamond file over 300 fret dresses at $215 each that's 26 cents a fret dress.
Fret erasers are not something that we would use either and we do have them. The wheels have been modified in our shop to polish saddles on electric bridges deburring and permitting smooth transitions with no risk of strings breaking there.
We use the Collins Fret Buffer that my friend and business partner invented and built. Many shops now use these including some folks on this forum who built their own. Search the archives, it is detailed here a number of times. It is again though over kill for you. FRETS.net also have the Collins Fret buffer in their archives as many of those folks are pros and benefit from it.
Old school polishing involved working smart first to reduce or eliminate as many scratches as one can PRIOR to moving on to sanding and polishing. It's important that all frets are down in place and glued too. Then it's quad folded, quality sand paper like the playing card in the spokes of your bike with you were a kid to sand the sides and tops of the frets. I move through 320, 400, 600, 800, 1,000 and 1,200 finishing up with OOOO steel wool with good results. It takes about 1/2 and hour. Conversely if you use our Collins fret buffer I can do all of this with better results in three minutes. YMMV
My suggestion for you is to concentrate on one operation at a time. For example simply fretting is a can of worms in and of itself. You will need to clean out fret slots, perhaps enlarge them, have the ability to clamp and glue frets, perhaps hammer some or all etc. You will need special tools if the neck is bound as well. You will need to learn about compression and how you can ruin a neck by not understanding compression and inducing a level of back bow that no two way rod could counter not that you ever want to use the rod for this. There is the issue of compound radius boards as well.
Lots to learn. My approach when I was learning was to incrementally learn. I tried to not worry about things until I was near there.
Hope this helps. Please also keep in mind that some very bright people here have preached over the years that on early guitars it's important to simply get though it and not consider any early guitar to be the end all to be all. It's been said by these folks it's a wood working project.
When you get to the user interface, the set-up, fretting, nut making, etc. there will be more to learn.
Login
Register
FAQ
