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My wood of choice for this build is maple. 2 reasons: it was given to me and I am making a Gibson L6 replica.

I notice that most maple boards on Strats have a gloss finish. Should this be done before slotting? After slotting? After fretting?

i would say its really just a matter of personal preference. i think i find it easiest to finish the whole neck first and then clean up the fret slots and slot it. either way makes a little extra work in a different way, if you spray after fretting you will have a little more clean up to to on the frets during the dress. in either case i would wait to do the fret dressing till after you have sprayed the finish.

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~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I've wondered the same thing lately. I'm hoping to do a bound maple fretboard on my current build. I think that I'm going to finish after binding and fretting. I considered finishing before fretting and binding, but I'm worried about delaminating the finish hammering the frets in. But I'm also doing a Gibson style binding(with the little binding nubs on the end of the frets), and I worry about finishing the neck, then leveling the frets and having the little nubs at the ends ending up a slightly different shade than the rest because I sanded the lacquer off of them during the leveling and crowning process. I'll have to be really careful to make sure I use a lacquer that is water clear, not one that imparts an amber hue. Never done this before, so it's learn by doing( like everything is with this stuff).

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

you can lessen that risk if you press the frets instead of hammering. i have used my drill press as a fret press before, just made a radius block from some hard sugar maple and it work pretty well.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Thanks, Shad, that's good advice. But i doubt I'll ever progress past a fret hammer. Hammering frets in is one of my absolute favorite things in building.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I thought about using the drill press as a fret press. Thanks Shad, I'm sure that would work.

When I studied guitar building, I was told to first finish the fingerboard, then apply the fret, the obvious reason is to prevent a build up of lacquer arround the frets which would crack off in the futur if the frets would need to be removed and all together make the job a real pain.

I've recently built this model here, I finished the board with some matt acrylic lacquer before fretting it...

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http://hufschmidguitars.com

I've done it both ways.
Prefer applying the finish after fretting.

Also - did a few cyano finishes on maple fretboards.
Takes extra care so you can breath, but it's so much faster than layers of lacquer.

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