Official Luthiers Forum!

How do you guys polish frets? I can get them "pretty good", but I see guitars with mirror polished frets and try as I might, I just can't get them quite that smooth & shiny. What I've been doing lately (with my best results) is using Stew Mac fret erasers. After I get them crowned and the ends dressed I use 800 (blue), 2000 (green), and 8000 (yellow) grit erasers. Then I go over them with a fret polishing micro abrasive paper (I don't remember the grit or where I got it). They look and play pretty good, but I'm looking for that really shiny smooth finish.

Any help?

Thanks

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"Real guitars are for old people, Mr. Marsh."

Eric Cartman

My method... sand the length of the fret using wet-or-dry 320, then wet-or-dry 600. Finally, buff with white Meguiar paste. Looks like chrome! No evil steelwool. (if you must, use Scotchbrite)

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

We have a machine that puts a high polish on the frets in only a couple of minutes.

We call it the Collin's Fret Buffer since David Collins invented it. It was also invented out of a study that Dave was doing of vintage methods and tooling at the old G*bson Plant on Parsons Street. Those guitars look like they were subjected to a wire wheel which was the inspiration for the Collins Fret Buffer.

Mind you we are a commercial repair facility and do fret work every day so it may be over kill for you, I understand that.

The buffer uses progressive grits of 3M abrasive impregnated wheels. We can get a mirror shine very quickly. IME we also can do hundreds of guitars and have before these wheels need replacement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v6IvrU8gqw
Start at 12:31 for Freddy's polishing methods. It's a bit time consuming, but it works wonders.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I'll give some of these things a try.

Am I the only one who wants to lay that thing of Hesh's down in the street and see how fast it will go? Maybe it's just the 13 year-old inside me that rears his head at the most inopportune moments.

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"Real guitars are for old people, Mr. Marsh."

Eric Cartman

Ha - I've had the opportunity to test drive that one and I will admit, it is a bit intimidating at first

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I opted to polish by hand instead of potentially eating my guitar!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I use a Dremel with a felt wheel chucked into it. I load the wheel with Menzerna Polishing compound and run the felt pad over the fret once or twice....comes out looking like a newly chromed bumper !
Just make sure you use masking tape to tape off both sides of the fret your polishing.

I was first in line and was very impressed with the Collins's fret buffer, not sure if I can
justify a 4 wheel unit but having the wheels to mount on my buffer would be nice.

The Music Nomad Frine stuff gets some decent results provided you have the frets sanded and polish enough. Just gives a little extra sheen that's nice