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Hey gang - 
Just wondering what you all use to finish your fretboards and bridges?  Is there a common oil finish or something for both ebony and rosewood?

You want to use only a fretboard oil on the fretboard. A finish will not stand up to the wear a fretboard gets and end up a flakie mess.

There are lots of FB oils available. I like boiled Linseed oil Stewmac and LMI sell their own formulas.

As far as the bridge, I do not use any thing but Boiled Linseed oil, then after it has dried well I buff it out with Menzerna fine paste on the buffer

My typical FB and bridge oil treatment is one wipe down per day, allow to dry for one day. repeat this process three times.

Waterlox.   Fantastic stuff.   Less gummy than linseed.

There was a thread recently on fretboard oils for finishing.  Let's see, could it be Here?  It was a pretty good discussion, with Howards Feed N Wax coming out on top, I think.  Howards, is  available at Woodcraft, if there is one in your area.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I stand corrected  Waterlox was the upside product in that thread.  Feed N Wax was used by some.  Other oils by some.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

not many put on any finish.

Others use fretboard oil.

Petros has a product.

Waterlox is one, it is sort of a finish but light.

Jaco Basses are finished in Epoxy, of course that's fretless.

Some folk just polish ebony with the naturally occurring oils in the wood.

And, then there is the fender maple fretboards, those are actually finished, probably with nitro lacquer? Dunno.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Hmmmm, boy I left that window open too long before responding.

Does anyone but me dislike the smell of linseed oil?

I used some tung oil, now that's not bad at all.

Of course I was finishing the backside of some relic-ed bass necks so it doesn't count in this thread.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

I only use rosewoods for both fingerboards and bridges almost always BRW but also Mad rose. personally I never use any oils or other finishes on them they contain their own oils, I just vigorously hand buff them, and that's it. But I'm not really into over shiny anything.

Colin

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

I use Waterlox also. It's a tung oil base, and has the highest percentage of tung oil of any of the finishes I've found. Drys dry, not gummy.

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain