Official Luthiers Forum!

What if I were to fret the bottom of the fingerboard (the part that will be in contact with the body) before gluing the fingerboard to the neck and then fret the rest of the fingerboard after it is glued to the neck...? Any thoughts or comments? ...good idea? or

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

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“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
-jack handy

No, it wouldn't make any sense. Fretting until after final assembly is done to leave opportunity to true any inconsistencies in the board surface that can (and often do) occur during assembly. The area you propose pre-fretting is the area that would most benefit from being left open, while the area you would leave unfretted is the area that would need the least attention.

I'm a strong proponent of fretting as one of the very last steps in assembly for small builders, but if you're going to put the frets in first there's no reason to go half way. All or nothing.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Okay,
I know there has been discussion on the benefits of either fretting before or after the fingerboard has been glued to the neck. On my first 2 builds I fretted the fingerboard before gluing to the neck. That worked okay, but of course, the fingerboard bent from the wedging of the frets. I guess there was no harm done by that (although, the binding on the fingerboard bent also...). I thought that to avoid the bending, I could fret the board on the neck, but fret the bottom of the board first, before gluing to the neck... Is that much different from fretting the whole board before gluing to the neck...?

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

I fret after gluing the fb to the neck but before attaching it to the body. I press all the frets in and have had no problem on my first 6 builds.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

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

Steve - I think I remember a long discussion earlier this year about fretting before glueing. If I recall, the board is flexed to remove the bend. You reverse bend it slightly to seat the fret tangs and keep doing it until the board lays flat on its own. Check the archives.

Have fun!

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Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

I thought we're not supposed to discuss religion.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Steve is correct. Mario was the main proponent of fretting first and flexing the board to remove the back arc induced by the frets. I have tried this and it worked very nicely for me.

I have done it all three ways - off the neck, just the extension off the body, and totally on the body. Unless you have your system down, tried a number of prototypes, and optimized including perhaps a radiused caul under the fret press for fretting the board off the neck YMMV......

Mario can pull this off and I believe that others can pull it off too but be sure to follow his method to the letter and not take this idea out of context ignoring Mario's precise methodology.

As David said, for the mortal builders like me the surest way to do a nice and consistent job is to level the fret board on the neck and guitar and then fret it. BTW you can make simple jigs so the your Stew-Mac Jaws II can reach every fret even with the neck on the guitar.

Most of the time though I do what Ron does and I like to see a drop off of the fret board extension of about .015 at the last fret. Mario does this too. Also pay attention to Mario's use of HHG to lubricate the fret slots.

Jim buddy - CA sucks....... You know I am just kidding ya my friend.

It certainly is easier to put them in first, and I've hear a lot of people claim they can get it perfect. I've seen an awful lot of those guitars though, and find it hard to recall cases where I have agreed upon my inspection. Some can get close, but even that takes a lot of experience, and development of very, very, very consistent procedures to get acceptable results that can be trued up in a final fret dressing.

For beginning builders especially, the safest route by far is to leave the board bare until the entire instrument is finished and glued up. This offers the chance for a final truing of the board before fretting, after all the procedures that would effect it's condition have passed.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Kevin Ryan frets them off the guitar, but his workaround is a little different. He's using a blind slot/faux bound/boundless/Thorn-style....fretboard...like the ones John Watkins and I sell. They're much stiffer, so there's no backbow. In Kevin's case he trues up the surface of the top he glues the FB to to ensure that it lays the way he wants it to without distorting.

In fairness, though, Kevin's holding much tighter tolerances on most every part of his guitar than most other builders can/will (and in his case, he's over the bump on the curve so it's -saving- him time rather than taking it up).

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Correct-oh-mundo....

Since I switched to using epoxy to glue fret boards I also started using a fret board gluing caul that I purchased from John Watkins. It is hard maple, dead straight, radiused to match my fret board radius, and has indentations at various fret locations for registration pins.

Some waxed paper between the caul and fret board, which I did not do in this pic, would be a good idea if you are not able to predict and control your squeeze-out.

I experienced this on my last build, a 4-string solidbody bass with a bolt-on neck. I've always fretted the board off the neck, but this time I paid very close attention to tolerances, did Mario's back-bend to get rid of ALL of the back-bow induced by fretting, and used epoxy with a radiused caul as Hesh does. For the first time ever, I had no fretwork to do except to mill a little fallaway into the upper register (this one had 28 frets....).

Definitely saved me time on the fretwork. Now I'm even thinking of milling the fallaway into the fretboard itself rather than the frets.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....