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Anyone have fret bender plans or a suggetion for building a simple fret wire bender? I understand they can be made cheaply?

for my mandonaught I tried a new technique.

I put a slight bend on the frets by putting them in a 5mm hole drilled in a block of waste wood and .....

well.....

bending it!!!!

once that was done I used a T-bolt used to hold a vise onto the table of a vertical mill as a press in the pillar drill.



you can see the block with holes bottom left of the pic, with a few frets.......

I'm never gonna hammer frets again!!!martinedwards38891.5695833333

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LMI has fret bender plans

I built one, and it works pretty good, but I need to modify it a little for mando wire.

-Mark

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Pullman, WA

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I have a piece of 2" wide by half circle, 14" radius piece of rock maple with a slot for the tang cut into it. It has a cam clamp on one end and I use a 1" hardwood dowel and burnish the wire to that 14" radius. This is real cheap. there is some spring back but is still close to 14" radius. Total cost is $3.00 for the clamp and the rest is scrap. I do loose about 1" per stick of wire as un usable but no big deal.MichaelP38891.6287037037

See this one on Kathy Matsushita's site.

Fret bender


When I buy my fret wire, it always comes in coils that mean it is already pre-bent, never had any trouble.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

If you buy your wire from LMI it comes coiled and doesn't have to be bent. I use a 16" radius and it works perfectly without bending.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......