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I'm trying to learn guitar repair. I have an acoustic guitar that I am doing some work on. I am replacing the fretboard with a new one, the radius has not been cut.
What I'm wondering is, would it be better to radius it before I put it on the neck or after?

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You will probably find that some do it one way while others do it the other way depending on their building style. Some even fret the fretboard before gluing it down. I prefer to radius the FB after the neck has been bolted on and the fretboard glued to the body. It's the last thing I do before finishing the guitar and then fretting it. I like to glue it flat because it's easier with a flat gluing caul and then putting the radius in while the neck is attached allows me to get everything dead flat and even fudge the neck angle ever so slightly if needed.

I like to radius everything as the last step in the construction of the guitar as well.

I realized things can move as you install the neck, glue in the frets, etc. and I felt it was best to set everything after all the steps that could create movements are done, that way I can guarantee everything to be level. Not scratching the finish (on an acoustic body) is always a challenge. I found what works is taping stainless steel sheets onto the guitar body to protect it. Also make your radius block narrower if necessary.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

FWIW, I slot the board then radius it, bind it if I'm going to, do the inlay, radius the inlay, fret it, then glue it onto the neck in that order. I press the frets in and feel that I can support the board better off the guitar, and of course it needs to be radius before fretting. I also like it laying flat on my workbench while I'm trying to dig out the inlay holes. There are also several different ways to radius it - some people use a router sled or a swinging belt sander jig, others just sand, scrape and plane which is what I'be been doing . I've made so many different scale and radius guitars that lately I've just been buying preslotted boards from LMI.

Obviously lots of ways to skin that cat-gut

I install frets as the last step simply because guitars have to be re-fretted. You can't get around having to install it over an acoustic guitar body. I hammer them with a lead block under the soundboard, I find it works better this way instead of having to buy expensive jigs for me to press them for acoustic guitars.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Is there any aspect of guitar building that can only be done one way to achieve a good result?

no, but there are ways to do this that would result in less issues later on down the road.

I used to radius, slot, and even fret everything before the fretboard went on. But as time went on I realized that the act of gluing on a fingerboard, the neck, there are so many variables that it was simply much safer to just put everything together before messing around with the neck. For example the act of gluing the neck and fingerboard on sometimes introduces the dreaded hump at the body to neck joint. Radius, fret, level as the last step eliminates that issue.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Personally I would slot and radius a FB before gluing on a fitted neck.
Easier to do, less chance of damaging the guitar and no danger of having to remove it if there's a problem.
FB final levelling and fretting etc. after gluing.
I use radiused cauls laid on a solid flat surface for clamping and allow at least 3 days for the glue to dry if water based.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Like Tai I have found that there can be some very minor issues with fretting first. Minor issues along a fretboard are huge though when going for the lowest possible action. I've certainly gotten a lot better over the years as setting the right neck angle and prepping everything so that the neck joint goes smoothly but still...

I like to use the Stewmac sanding beam to create a conical fretboard. I first hit the FB with a smoothing plane, then use sanding blocks to approximate the compound radius then use the beam in strokes along the string lines and it finishes of the FB dead flat from nut to last fret.

I'm not sure I could get that degree of accuracy by creating the radius first, especially fretting the FB off the neck. OF course I could create the radius first then touch it up once everything is attached but again it's easier to clamp a flat FB to the neck.

As was mentioned there are many ways to fry this fish.

Clamping a radiused fingerboard is always necessary sometimes... that's what the radius block is for. For example you have to do a neck reset...

I always include the cost for a refret in neck reset jobs for this reason. Anytime I tried a neck reset without a refret it always ended in a disaster

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Is there any aspect of guitar building that can only be done one way to achieve a good result?


Yes - using glue to hold those pesky parts together

Ed

We radius after binding the board, before any inlay work, and before the board is glued to the neck. Once the neck is finished and the guitar is assembled, the board is final-leveled, any fall-away milled into the extension, then fretted.

Radiusing could be done later, as it's one of those things in the order of build (OOB) that can be moved around with just minor adjustment of other related tasks, but we don't really see any advantage re: our current OOB, where finishing is done before guitar assembly and fretting.

Anyone working with vintage instruments should have a method for resetting a neck without disturbing fretwork, as it is common to see instruments which may need a reset, but really don't have fret issues (unless we induce them with our reset).

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

It sometimes can't be avoided because the necessary neck angle and the body plane is not the same, so there's a rather large fall away which introduces the dreaded hump. That is unless a wedge is made to support the fingerboard and avoid the hump entirely.

Also the vintage guitars I have worked on has no truss rods at all but still uses steel string. Their neck were already badly bowed enough to where a fret level isn't possible at all without forcing it straight (probably with a neck jig). It's just in my opinion it's never good to force wood to go into certain positions and setup on steel string guitars without a truss often requires drastic measures like compression fretting (and often that isn't even though).

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

We generally don't wedge valuable vintage instruments, given how that fix is usually regarded by the market. We often get by with a light level, crown, and polish when we do wedge an extension, although I have miscut a wedge and ended up spending a lot of non-billable time addressing the gaff.

I was unaware that compression fretting was considered a drastic measure - it seems to be the norm here for 1985 and earlier Martins and a fair number of guitars that lack adjustable rods. Maybe I'll ask the boss for a boost in compensation when it involves that sort of stuff.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

If you are trying to learn guitar repair replacing a fretboard on a beater is one of the least productive things that you will likely not do again that you can spend your time on.

Typical bread and butter things that Luthiers are contracted to do for clients do not include fretboard replacements. I would estimate that for the around 10,000 guitars now that we've worked on (since I've been doing this) we've only replaced one fret board. And that was by choice to remove BRW from an Epiphone New York jazz guitar for a well known touring musician who needed a clearly maple board and bridge when crossing international borders. This was not a valuable instrument making the swap not inappropriate for the instrument.

I understand this is not what you asked but it is what I'm offering. If you want to learn guitar repair the types of things that many of us make our livings doing are not this. Some examples of where much more business seems to be are:

1). Set-ups..... Over half our business has always been set-ups which are a great stalking horse to other things that we can spot and point out.
2). Fret work - as part of a more comprehensive set-up fret dressing and even refrets may be necessary for some instruments.
3). Bridge reglues, bridge plate caps, bridge replacements, bridge crack repair, fitting non-slotted pins.
4). Bone nuts and saddles. You can never spend too much time learning to craft eloquent and functional bone saddles and nuts that fit well.
5). Tuner replacement, servicing (for vintage) and lately ripping the s***** Gibson auto-tuners off and throwing them out the window
6). Crack repair, gluing, cleating, filling, hiding, rehumidifying etc. brace regluing
7). This should have been number 3 or so, pup installations, swaps, Pot swaps, switch swaps, etc.
8) And lots of other things but not fretboard replacements.

Anyway you can see that replacing a fretboard is not on the list and likely something that many Luthiers may not ever do.

A couple more things I wanted to mention. In response to Woodie that's our experience too with neck resets and fret work. We always dress frets after a reset but refretting is not necessary unless the thing needed a refret before the reset and the two have nothing to do with each other. As such we always charge with a neck reset for a fret dress but not a refret.

Regarding protecting the guitar body from dings and even encasing it in stainless steel this is also not something that we find necessary with all the thousands of guitars that we have worked on damage has been very, very rare. I did drop a Martin counter top low end model as it fell off my bench a few years ago and it hit square on the middle of it's back, bounced 1.5 feet back in the air and I caught it. Close inspection did not uncover even a scratch, no loose braces making me one lucky Hesh.... . This is the only accident I've had knock on BRW.

When I was learning this stuff I once asked the Master Luthier who I studied with "what happens if I scratch the thing" and he replied "great, now you have an opportunity to learn how to fix the scratch..."

Lastly my world is purely and entirely commercial when it comes to Lutherie now. It's no longer about what's interesting to me or what I want to spend more of my time doing but it is very much about where the market, what actual clients want done is taking us. When remembering back to my days here as one of the most prolific posters ever on this forum I recall the builder influence here that often stressed over things that were and are simply not realistic in a commercial setting.

You will find people here taking on all manner of repairs that in many cases would not be something a commercial shop, unless they had so little business that they could afford to create more liability for themselves.... would ever do.

When we train apprentices they learn to do the kinds of things that folks come to us and ask us to do. But here we will see people sawing off necks on beaters to convert some POS to a bolt on, etc which again is not something that you will ever do in the commercial world.

You will also see an aversion to working on finished instruments which, of course, is my entire world now and I never even give it a thought. An efficient bench set-up without falling tools over the bench is helpful here.

Lastly if and when you go to get a job with an established Luthier or shop, music store, etc no one will be asking you about replacing a fretboard. You will instead be asked to make nut, set-up an instrument, dial in a Floyd, swear at a Rik, cuss out small builders for s***** fret work where half of them are loose (present company excluded of course... ).

Now what was your original question? Kidding of course.

I never really replaced fretboards either though I buy a lot of the materials simply because the prices on them isn't getting lower. I think tonewood is good investment sometimes, the thing just keeps going up in price. I sometimes wonder if the major guitar companies lobby with CITES on purpose to drive up the price of tonewood.

I did a lot of fretwork, nut replacement, etc. because most cheap instruments come with POS plastic nuts and doing so is the best way to make a cheap guitar sound better. I'm doing a deal with a coffee shop where they bring in their guitar for a setup and they get free drinks... helps give me exposure and helps the coffee shop make some profit.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Hi Rick,
As Hesh has indicated in so many words, the average repair shop is averse to taking in "basket cases" because the "time sink " keeps them away from more profitable work. When I used to deal in many different types of instruments I would send brasses and woodwinds out to have them cleaned, lacquered, repadded, and resprung but wouldn't expect to get them back for a few months. Although the repairman was very adept at his trade he couldn't let the small more profitable jobs be held up and have dissatisfied customers who needed little Johnie's flute fixed today so he could play in the school band tomorrow. His prices were reasonable and his work was excellent.
Replacing a fretboard is not a waste of time as you will need to do many of the things Hesh mentioned to complete the job, and it may give you a better understanding of how all those things work together. Learning all types of repair work has value even if only to keep you from being a "one trick pony".
As an amateur I do take on basket cases which I personally own, but I am a "Not for Profit" luthier.

I don't think you see much replacement fretboards because it's a really big operation, and unless the player is really picky about intonation to where fan frets, squiggly frets, or buzz feiten won't do (where he has a new fretboard for every different keys), or the guitar is so badly mangled but irreplaceable the customer would rather replace the fretboard, nobody would do it.

Though if I can get a bunch of EIRW fretboard from Aliexpress for 3.50 a pop, I'll buy a bunch because it may not be 3.50 a pop in the future.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I was thinking that a person would need to know how to do this if they were maybe considering doing a complete guitar build. Whether I use the knowledge or not I want to know how. There are cases where it may be necessary.

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