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I have this strat neck where the 1st fret is lower than all the others. When I lay a 20 " straight edge on the tops of all the frets it will rock at this spot. So after straightening the neck I mark the tops and begin to level. The marks are all gone including the low 1st fret but the rock is still there, I can fit a .004" feeler gauge between the 1st fret and the straight edge. I used a 20" sanding beam to level.

My question is how reliable is bluing or is it just 1 part of the whole measuring and gauging process? If I had forgotten to check this area I would've assumed it's all level but then it got me thinking what other frets or areas of frets could be off?

I guess I'd like to learn more ways to verify your frets and your work before finishing the procedure.

I typically use a rocker to find the high frets. The blue color is to make sure you hit the low one... If your fret is still low - but you sanded off the blue..

I would look at your technique and equipment. Are you supporting the neck directly under where is low? That will do this all day long. Holding your sanding beam on the ends? Maybe your beam has a slight hollow in the middle... Check with a known good straight edge.

If one fret is way off - I would probably rather pull it out and replace rather than grinding down all of them to match... I like to leave frets as close to full height as I can.

You never know what happened - could be a setup guy took the nut a little too low and then just sanded down the first fret a bit rather than making a new nut...

A really funny one I ran into is that several inexpensive (but not dirt cheap) Asian guitars had the first 4 frets taller than the rest. The frets were very uniform with eachother - but were noticably taller than the rest by 0.010" or so.. Perhaps a way to reduce warranty complaints about the first couple frets wearing out too soon?

The straightedge is the best way to verify fret levelness if you have any doubts.

I don't "mark" the frets. The file marks on top of the frets are enough to indicate whether the file or sanding board is making contact with the fret surfaces.

I prefer to use a long file (epoxied to a block) rather than a sanding beam for the initial leveling process, and I follow up with a sanding beam or block with 180 grit to remove file marks, and then follow up with 320 or 400 grit to remove the 180 grit scratches. The advantage of a long file is that it is rigid, whereas sandpaper is soft and has some "give" to it, and will therefore contact the low frets before they are actually level with the surrounding frets. For this reason, if you use a sanding beam, you have to keep sanding for a while after the sandpaper starts to contact the low frets. If you use a file, you'll know they're level as soon as the file contacts the low frets.

Thanks Chris.
What kind of file would you recommend?

Rather than taking all the frets down to one low one, why not pull it and replace it with something taller?

It's my friend's guitar and he noticed it didn't play as well as his other guitar even though they're almost identical and difference was this neck had much taller frets. So I figured lowering them all would help the overall comfort level.

Ok.... Now this makes sense... The bit about intentionally lowering all the frets to level with the first one is a detail worth including.

Most likely, what is going on... When the beam passes the first fret - it's no longer supported and puts more pressure on that fret - and so it takes off more material.

Change your support from the ends of the neck to near the middle of the fretboard and try to stay off the #1 fret till you know you are at its level with a straight edge or rocker. 0.004" is only a couple passes with 100 grit.

Then - mark it and dust it lightly with fine sandpaper on your beam.. Just enough to scratch it with 320... Not clean it white with 100 grit... Just enough to ensure its level with the others...

Thanksp

It had other fret issues as well so it needed dressing but the 1st fret was way out.
Sorry, could you clarify "Change your support from the ends of the neck to near the middle of the fretboard"?

Thanks for the reply.

Leveling, even with a perfectly level beam, is more complex than just removing marker on the tops.
You can cover a basketball with sharpie and take it all off with a 20" leveling beam but it obviously won't be straight. A beam will tip forward in the direction of travel on a convex surface.

You need to decide where you need to remove material and make sure that's whats happening. Re-blue the tops and take one small controlled stroke and see whats happening. If its not what you want Stop. high areas must be taken down first.
Figure out what ingredients, pressure on the beam, pressure supporting the neck, direction of travel, etc. removes fret where you want it to before continuing. A simple back and forth scrubbing motion tends to produce a convex surface. How many saddles do you come across that are thinner in the middle?
Occasionally a very controlled pass, bass to treble, will highlight what is high because cross scratches are easy to see against lengthwise ones.
Up towards the bridge, there are more frets and so that end will be lowered more slowly. especially if you don't knock down any rise there first.
re-crowning during leveling can also help target high area's. If you crown high frets to a knife line or until any flat is gone, they will get knocked down right away. This can be used to help control a tendency towards convexity.
Many more things I'm sure others can add.

"Change your support".

What are you using under the neck to keep it from flopping around on your workbench? Aka - how are you supporting the neck while you are working on it. Reposition that support away from where it's sanding too much to where it's not sanding enough.

That's what I figured, I thought maybe you meant how I was supporting the beam. Thanks for clarifying.

.004 in fretwork is huge. It's kind of weird that it's only 1 fret and the others are all level. What kind of sanding beam? Something machined flat?

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Pat

My mistake, it was .003. I couldn't remember off the top of my head. I've been using a level with sand paper glued to either side. It's new, I can't say it's machined flat but I compared it to other straight edges and some glass and it looks straight. If it's off I don't think by much.

I agree with everyone else about even support and even sanding Strokes. After I put some Fall Away in the upper frets I use a 16-inch machined beam and holding it in the middle, my Strokes are only a couple inches always contacting all the frets I'm hitting.

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Pat

Bluing is VERY reliable but you have to do all other necessary things such as have a proven method AND understand the process, goals, pitfalls, as with anything to make it work for you.

When all things are considered we are working to the thickness of ink, less than .0005" and that's pretty tight.

I've just completed four fret dresses in two days, a record for me...but you have to have a methodology that you understand, are tooled up for and actually works with proven results. Things also start with having references such as a calibrated surface plate to true up your leveling beam(s). Understanding neck geometry and how truss rods work (or don't...) is important too.

Fret rockers have limited value in the big picture and are only a spot check for unlevel frets and in no way should ever be used to determine your approach. The fret plane must be considered as a whole. A straight edge considers the fret plane as a whole but does not give back positive feedback as clearly as ink being present or absent AND there are lots of opportunities for errors in viewing angle, etc.

If your buddy is a shredder very low action is desirable and that requires some learned skills to do the fret work.

Have all frets been glued in place, a spongy, loose fret that goes down when being leveled and pops up with no pressure on it could be an issue for you too after all this messing around with the neck.

I'd recommend reading up on the processes available, Dan E. has a great book at Stew-Mac or take it to someone who knows what they are doing (no insult intended fret work is an art that can take years to learn to do very, very well).

Thanks for the advice, I get what you're saying.
Is Dan's book any different than his DVD set? I have those, basic and advanced fretting.

You need an accurate straight edge to check the flatness of the level you are using.
I suspect the level is really not flat the entire length.
When you are leveling, let the weight of the level do the sanding. Only guide it, don't press down on it.
Best of luck,
Dan

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I don't know Paul I've never watched the videos. Dan has been to our shop and got started in the business from our shop way back in the day when he had long hair and walked around shirtless with Iggy Pop on the streets of Ann Arbor.

Best thing I've read all day.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

So I had some major success today. In December I made an Erlewine neck jig so I thought I would give it a try.

The difference, for me anyway, were those metal support posts. The jig and those posts made the neck so sturdy that when I was sanding I could actually feel the individual frets underneath the beam. The beam is aluminum so it's really light anyway and it's T-shaped at the bottom so unlike before I was controlling the beam with my fingers as opposed to a grip from the top. What I also did differently was I stood at the headstock and sanded away from me. So with the beam perpendicular to me and my hands on either side of the beam I was able to keep a straighter line to follow the string path and the radius.

I still marked the tops with a sharpie but with the above changes I felt way more confident that the marks my beam was making were accurate. And when I was done and all the marks were gone, the sanding beam just felt right on the frets, so I knew I was done, before I had to guess.

Fast forward to setup and the thing plays awesome, by far my best fret job. Really low action, no funky notes, intonation is spot on, 2 step bends are easy (I spent extra time on polishing).

What's most interesting is that every answer in this thread is absolutely correct but not on its' own...support is vital, beam has to be super straight, bluing is important but only if everything else is too, it's an art (relies on feel), and everyone has their own way and their own tools. And of course Be The String.

Weird how all these components came together at once. That's months and months of research on my part and this thread. So thanks again.

Great! It's amazing how much difference like simply supporting the neck more evenly can have a huge difference.

It goes to show you that even though you think of these structures as "stiff" - they are quite a bit more flexible than you would think.

I see the same when jointing tops. You can plane a 0.005" hollow into a 9" deep top half by not paying attention to your supports, posture, and hand position while planing the joint.. Even with a good plane that's about dead flat...

A neck jig is not necessary to do very high quality fret work. It's done likely all over the planet daily without a neck jig.

We "had" one but it never got used for years on end.... so it didn't make the cut when we had to do all that we do in only 1,000 square feet. It was great for hanging those Stew-Mac shop aprons on though....

I only support the neck in one place on the "safed" edges of our leg vices and then move the neck forward and aft if I want to use the support position to advantage.

The guys who took our classes will recall this and it may not make full sense to others but if we want to mill in relief on the bass side and eliminate excess relief on the treble side I support the neck under the point where I would want maximum relief for the neck geometry that we create, relief between the 1st and 12th and fall-away there after. The support becomes a fulcrum and because the neck is NOT fully supported slight backward pressure on the headstock with our finger tips while using the beam tracing the string paths for the low e and a and I am creating relief in either the board of the frets. Likewise pulling the headstock slightly toward me while doing the high e and b and relief is reduced. Of course I can reverse this too.

In other words NOT fully supporting the neck while doing fret work is desirable to us and permits us to correct errors in the structure and frets with "the touch...."

Neck jigs were never intended for most fret work and were created for problem guitars since Dan would work on some of the guitars of the stars from time to time he had to be able to see why someone's P-bass buzzes in the playing position but doesn't on it's back while the fret work is being done. Dan spent over ten years creating and improving the neck jig and it is a great tool for those difficult, as Dan would say and does say "rubber neck" instruments.

Neck jigs are also a decent teaching tool to demonstrate that the playing position and gravity impact some guitars more than others with visual, positive feedback of same.

But a neck jig is not required to do superb fret work or even lousy fret work by any means nor is 50 shades of gray support for a neck completely mobilizing it. Simply understanding how the support points and methods will impact your work and exploiting it to your advantage works great.

You know if you start sighting down every guitar neck that you encounter on the treble and then the bass side you will see the differences in relief. You will also see that about half the time the bass side that should have more relief has less than the treble side.

This is because f*ctories make no effort to create a proper fret plane usually beyond anything to do with manufacturing. When you learn to do high quality fret work you can easily correct this and that can result in far better results for players.

The most tolerant instruments of lousy fret work are bluegrass dreads with mediums and classical guitars with higher action. Conversely the shredders have the greatest need for very low action, mandos, 12 strings, finger style steel strings, etc. all benefit from very high quality fret work. The lighter the string gauges, the less inertia the strings have to overcome and the more they may lash out and contact the frets also requiring higher quality fret work.

When we build our first Stew-Mac dread kit and half our frets are loose and we are clueless it often doesn't matter because of the higher action. We learn later that there was more to it, way more to it..... than we thought.

We tell our students that being a builder is a bit of a handicap when learning fret work. Why? Because unless you can produce a sizable quantity of instruments monthly you will never get enough practice with fret work without huge amounts of time in between opportunities to get really good at it. This is often why our students go back home and revisit prior builds and start even earning some coin doing repair work. If you know what you are doing you can easily make $85 an hour doing decent fret work.

^^^For sure. I'm in no way endorsing that jig, it just taught me something, and it was fun. The reason why I wasn't even using it in the first place is because most people don't. I also understand there's still more to learn, it was just a new experience.

I've never had an interest in building because it's very time consuming. I'm a player, that's where I spend my time, so good fret work is important to me. I find the repairs places in my area are all about raising the action to fix every issue. And who can go 1-3 weeks without their main axe!?

Good going Paul. Lots of players greatly appreciate great fret work.

One of our customers in the last week bought us five different guitars all for fret dresses. Talk about having carpel Bicep...

Interestingly all of the guitars had the very same frets worn. I mentioned to the guy that maybe he needs to learn some new tunes, he was not amused...

A bastard cut mill file. A long one (12"-16") is ideal for general leveling, and will level frets more accurately than a short file. But shorter files are handy for spot leveling. Just cut the handle off and epoxy the file to a hardwood block. Follow up with a sanding block to eliminate file chattering.