Official Luthiers Forum!

Time is not only money for working pros in the trade managing your time is a matter of survival.... Seriously the brick and mortar bills have to be paid regardless of what business looks like so the Luthiers who last in this business have a keen eye on anything that sucks our time in an inordinate manner.

It's just as true that your work is a signature of not only your chops but if you even give a **** about what you do, how you do it and who you do it..... for. So with these two things in mind Dremels and any associated method seems to us, and we have tried them all, to be not for us for two basic reasons.

1). There is room for mistakes and slipping and marring the board. Now if you have lots of time on your hands and you want to spend this time fine but we prefer methods that have zero risk of creating "scope creep" extending the time to complete the job because we have to repair a gouge or something that our methods did to someone's valuable personal property.

2). It's slow, period. Time is money. Our buffer is way faster.

Instead we use the Collins Fret Buffer featured here many times in the past. Some quick passes on the four grits of 3M abrasive wheels and we have a shine equal to or superior to any other method we've seen.

In addition frets are not just another pretty face.... We go t a great deal of trouble to level with a level of precision that will accommodate the pickiest of players who want the lowest of action. Our clients include shredders and folks who precision fret work is uber important. So what ever method we use or you use should not change the "level set" achieved with the precision leveling beams.

With the fret buffer we control the amount of material we remove by the number of passes we subject the thing to. I suppose that you could do this with a Dremel too but your pressure is going to vary on one fret to the next or could.... One pass and we do all the frets with the same amount of pressure.

So, drum roll please, after putting my face mask on and going to the wheel as we call the Collins Fret Buffer three minutes later it's done with a shine that is second to none and we can move on, pay the bills and live to play another day.

Time is money, results DO matter and with our approach we can be mindful of both. I'll try to find a pic here of the Collins Fret buffer and post it. You may want to build your own as a nice side project. Just as always please use Dave's name if you show your buffer and used his ideas as we always should in Lutherie with anyone's IP (intellectual property).

PS: The Dremel wheels from Stew Mac can be filed into a V shape and are fantastic for polishing out the V inside g*bson style electric saddles. String breakage in the saddle area is often a telltale of the saddle having a burr or sharp seat. Hit them with a V shaped Dremel abrasive wheel and you can kiss string breakage in this location good bye and your frustrated clients love it.

This suggests yet another benefit of using the methods that do produce great results in minimal time - we have time to do other things to the instrument, our tricks of the trade so-to-speak and provide MORE value because we were and are efficient.

Thanks

Hesh I've been drooling over yours & Dave's Collins Fret Buffer since Dave first posted it years ago.

I've done extensive internet searching and I can't find those large wheels anywhere! Only the Dremel-sized ones.

Where did you get yours?


Edit:
Whoops, now I've found a supplier!
https://www.gessweincanada.com/product-p/145-1925m.htm

I've searched for a supplier so many times before, today's my lucky day.