Official Luthiers Forum!

Again, from the videos I purchased, I saw the fretboard slots being cut, then banding applied to the fretboard - so when it comes time to install the fretwire, what's the process?  measure each piece to the slot?  Do you hammer in your frets in this case or use a press? Do you extend the slots into the banding? 

Mitch

 

You can hammer o press. doesnt matter .. but you will need to nip the tang off the fret ends to make them fit inside the binding .. see the stew mac fret tang nipper in their catalog, has a nice pic ..

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Mitch, you need to get a set of fret wire tang nippers from StewMac or LMII. Measure the fret wire to length then cut off the fret tang over the binding area. I have the StewMac version and it works well for standard fret wire.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

[QUOTE=Don A] Mitch, you need to get a set of fret wire tang nippers from StewMac or LMII. [/QUOTE]

or a file and a block of wood with a slot....

John

Mitch the simple answer is yes you need to measure and nip the tang to be just shorter than the span between bindings and or purfling. I have use small wire nippers to remove the unwanted tang. But the Stewmac tang nipper is great and not very expensive. Sure make this quick.

If you were ever doing a purfling/shell/purfling/binding configuration the distance from the end of the fret to the start of the tang is significant enough to create some problems with the ends of the fret to want to lift easy. I know you are just inquiring about bound only FBs, but just as a note for future reference I though I would mention how I do this more elaborate binding/fretting. Simply stated, I glue up the inside purfling, shell and outer purfling into a routed channel in the FB and re-slot the by hand after the glue has cured. Then glue up the outer binding. This way when I fret the distance from the end of the fret to the start of the tang is the same as if it was just a bound only FB

I will second or third the recommendation for the fret tang nippers, they are the cats meow!

Something else to be careful of is that your tang is not to long. If it is you risk separating your binding from your fretboard as you drive the fret in the slot and it (widens)

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

A dremel with an abrasive cut-off wheel works pretty good too. Not as nice as the Stewmac nippers though.

Cheers,

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Horton, MI

So, the crown spans across the entire fretboard, binding and all, but the tang is cut back to fit in between the bindings, correct?

Thanks for putting up with me...

Mitch

YOU GOT IT!

Thats correct mitch,

It can make sense to make the the tang a little shorter than the distance
between the bindings to give you room for error.
at least on your first and you be more accurate after you have done this a
few times.

Joel.

But wait - there's more.......

I spent this afternoon at David Collin's shop asking David to check out a fret job that I just did.  This guitar has a bound fret board as well and I used the fret tang nippers from Stew-Mac.

What I did not do correctly was after the tang is nipped off it invariably will leave a slight, raised area where the tang was not completely cut off perfectly flush.  This remaining tang then sits on top of the fret board binding and interferes with the frets ability to sit down perfectly at the ends.  If you glue your frets a slightly high fret end will not provide any contact area to glue.

So one of the many things that I learned from David today was after using the fret tang nipper turn over the fret and file the remaining tang off.  This only takes a few seconds to do and will greatly improve your results.

Thanks again David!!!!

You know!? I got a bit chastised a while back when I tried to explain that even the Stewmac tang nippers left a small amount of the radius formed in the extruding process and that filing was still needed. I started to do a scetch to show why this happens but got buszy at work and forgot to. Thanks Hesh for pointing this out again.

With any tool that you use to cut the tang, the radius formed in the extruding process will cause the cutting blades to slide down to the tangent point of the tang flat and said radius. Now this is a very small radius so some may find it insignificant and may hammer or press the into the bindings. But I like to file it off. It only takes a swipe or two and it is gone.

Thanks Michael. You know, I've always just taken the final cleaning up with a file as a given, and just wrote it off as a bit of slop in the nippers. Since it always seems to leave such a consistent bit of tang, regardless of how careful I am or which set of nippers I'm using, that explanation makes perfect sense. I just never gave it much thought. Thanks again.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Hi Mitch,
Everyone has given great advise.
I am going to start a new thread (a mini tutorial) with some pictures I took recently of fretting a bound neck-I hope you (and others) will
find it usefull.
Brad