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I bought a 2015 American Standard telecaster that I played a lot the last 2 years and have flattened the medium jumbo frets up to about the 12th fret. In the meantime, I have discovered that I really like jumbo frets, so, I have struggled with 1) buying a "W" neck) $360ish, 2) paying someone to refret the guitar $400ish, or 3) buying tools and doing the refret myself. I have eight other guitars, all of good quality, but nothing vintage, and some of them will need new frets at some point.

I realize that for one guitar, buying tools and doing the job myself is probably the most expensive option. Sourcing most of them from a famous tool seller, I figure about $900, so that's 2 or 3 guitars worth. I do have some woodworking skills, have built a couple of skin on frame boats and some cabinetry.

Here's my list:

Fretting kit: $291 This includes Wire nippers that could be used for pulling frets, fret leveling file, fret file, dressing stick with micromesh, fret rocker, deadblow hammer, and instruction book

Fret Puller kit: $96, A better fret puller, soldering iron, and chip guards

4" radius block $15
Neck support caul $15

Nut and Saddle Kit: $258, if I ma going with bigger frets I will probably need a new saddle, I might wait to find out.
Nut Neck caul for the saddle making: $50, used to help guide string groove depth
Fret Press caul with brass inserts $50 sourced from ebay, I have a drill press
Glue, dremel polishing wheels, etc $50
Fret Bender: $60 from ebay

It has been suggested that if I went forward I should practice on a "beater" neck, which I don't have, so that might be an additional expense.

Am I going too overboard here or is this a realistic setup and price range to get started?

Yes.

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

Would you have a better list?

This is my set up... (canadian dollar pricing)

- A pair of cheap end nippers ground flat (one small and one large) for pulling frets and cutting the ends off. (about $20)
- Soldering iron ($30)
- Radius blocks from stew mac. (4" ones, too short but I make do, $90)
- A cheap triangle file for prepping the slots to receive the new frets. ($6)
- A fret bender ($80 or $90)
- A small ball peen hammer ($12)
- An inexpensive but flat level that I use as a levelling beam ($25)
- A blue sharpie
- Masking tape
- Offset diamond crowning file from stew mac ($185)
- Fret erasers (for polishing, $78. But there are a lot of different ways to polish frets, I'm going to explore some inexpensive options down the road rather than replace these I think.)

I suppose that's about a $500 investment. A person could certainly make do without the radius blocks, fancy crowning file, fret bender, and fancy polishing method and still do a good job for a tooling investment of under $100. Without the dead simple tools though, it takes a lot more knowing what you're doing.

If you're re-fretting a telecaster neck you'll never need to make a new saddle.

Thanks. That's helpful.

I do have an 8" by 3" Atoma 180 grit diamond plate that I use for lapping water stones (knife sharpening stones). Would that be too coarse for leveling frets? If I could use it that would save some money.

David, it is NOT a good idea to get geared up for guitar work to save money. The economics just do not work out.

I started with a 6" bastard file epoxied to a block of wood. I didn't care for dealing with the file marks afterwards, and also the short length didn't give me enough control over the whole fret plane. So I switched to the 24" level. Now when I work it's levelling the whole fret board. And I typically attach 220 grit sand paper to my levelling beam. I think your diamond plate will work in a pinch.

I agree with Barry.

My opinions: Start with a minimum and add as needed. Big-bucks tools do 100% of their assigned task. Inexpensive alternatives do 90% of the job at 10% of the cost. And experience and judgement finish the job, and experience and judgement are needed anyway. A fancy tool won't do a task by itself.

And fancy tools may well end up covered in cobwebs. For example, I made a fret bender, cost me south of twenty bucks. And it sits on the shelf as I use pre-bent fretwire. Even cheaper. And faster.

I think Stew-Mac is the world headquarters for left-handed luthier's screwdrivers.

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Peter Havriluk

Further to that.... No amount of money can buy you experience.

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

Just a thought. You can make your fret bender out of scrap. Upper wheel attachment is in a slot to vary the radius. I made the wheels on my lathe, but you could use anything from toy wheels to various types of pipe. See pic. If you feel this is beyond your skill set, you might want to abandon the idea of refretting...

Hi David - professional Luthier here who's shop is on our 5th refret that we are doing just this week alone. We do a lot of fret work and are rather well known in the industry as the people who do top shelf fret work. Our clients have and do include famous players who travel to us for our services since we won't accept shipped in work (the post office is across the street from our facility but please don't tell anyone).

I think it's admirable that you want to do this yourself but I also think that it's a bridge too far to think that your early attempts at fretwork will be quality jobs that play and work out well for you. I say this from great experience here and there are at least a dozen people here on the OLF alone who have taken our multi day fretting class which we no longer offer. In our class we walk folks though and have them fret one guitar that they brought with them.

The instruction and the fretting takes two days and we are always rushed in these classes to get done in two days. When I refret a guitar it's about a 6 hour slog for me. My business partner David Collins who is considered one of the top Luthiers alive got all pissed off at a client yesterday and refretted his stainless job in 1.5 hours.... Being pissed off is a major motivator...

Anyway with no offense intended and ONLY the purest of heart here I would discourage you from the idea that you are going to do a beater and then successfully refret your fleet of guitars. It can be done but the results may be problematic.

Many of our clients are pro players and many of them record. Some of them you have listened to their stuff for decades and these folks can be very demanding in what they want and why they actually do benefit from and need the demanding specs. If you want low action a good understanding of fretting theory and implementation are a must. And of course we always included set-ups in our fretting courses because that's key to buttoning the package up and having it play like butter and exceed the client's expectations.

Another example of why this is a bad idea, for now but not when you learn more, is you also have to understand and have knowledge of what specs instruments should be set up to. Nut slot depth, action height, relief, string spacing, nut making, etc.

Refretting is a BIG job that requires lots of Lutherie skills and it's been said at one well known Lutherie school that you have to make about 100 nuts before you really are good at it and understand the process.

So let's look at your list and I will let you know if we use what you are proposing to purchase because much of these so-called pro tools are not used in our shop and with good reason.

1). Fretting kit: We don't use a thing in this kit. Nothing. The Fret rocker is only a quick and dirty check for a high fret and has zero business being used on a so-called precision fret level. We press our frets with the Jaws II tool and special caul sets that we helped design that you can get from Andy Birko here. We level with aluminum tube stock in various lengths 1 X 2 that we precision mill to nearly perfectly flat on a calibrated surface plate. We look for a flatness of .0005" over an 18" span. Our leveling beams are covered in 120, 220, 400, 600.

2) A pair of flush cut cutters, Channel Lock with the face flattened and an appropriate inner bevel to "lift"a fret when the jaws are closed and never "pull" a fret or you will chip up the board and spend half your time repairing damage you did. Chip guards we do not use and never could figure out any use for them. We have them, someone gave them to us as a gift. Mind you we have been a test site for Stew Mac stuff in the past so we have lots of stuff we simply don't use much of it.

3) Radius blocks are not necessary we use our leveling beams AND the set from SM of radius gauges to check our radius. I speak of leveling the board. All of your fret plane shaping from radius to relief and where the relief is specifically with more on the bass side and less on the treble side is something that we impart to the board BEFORE we fret. Once the frets are in all these things translate to the fret tops.

If any of your guitars have a maple board there are a whole new list of skills that you will need to learn including refinishing.....

For neck support search "leg vice" here and see the pics of our vices and the many leg vices that others here have built themselves. It's the best guitar repair and fret work vice available and you can't purchase it you have to make your own. Of course this is my experience and opinion. We have the other Lutherie commercially available vices and have them thrown in our gables in our attic and don't use them preferring the leg vice.

Misc. Purchase your wire in a roll and if you have more to do you can buy more. It's preradiused in it's coil and no need to touch it you can use it in the radius that it comes right off the roll. Jescar is who you should get your wire from they are an excellent source of quality products and they sell in small quantities to individuals.

For nut making the only Lutherie tools that we use that are not simply quality tools for general work, files, etc are the gauged nut slot files from SM and we love them.

Fret polishing although some use the Dremel we never have and it's way too slow for us. Search on "Collins fret buffer" and you will see how in five minutes time or less we can completely remove scratches and then impart a very high polish to frets. It also cleans up the board beautifully.

So hopefully something here is helpful to you.

I joined another forum yesterday and asked questions about sharpening photographs that I take with my 61 MP Sony A7R4. Some jerks responded and were not helpful or friendly.

So I thought that I would right the wrong by being helpful to you and writing you a bit of a master class in preparing to do fret work here.

Welcome aboard and good luck to you.

PS: The only fret press that we have worked with is the SM Jaws II so YMMV on an other press and be sure it's compatible with a big caul set because you may need it.

I appreciate everyone's response. Hesh, I appreciate your detailed review. It definitely will stop me from placing a big order for tools, and probably from trying this at all, at least for now. While I am very tempted to embark in this, as I have for many projects, it sounds like there is a significant learning curve here. And my target guitar does have a maple fretboard, and I would not like to have to refinish - another tricky skill to learn.

What about resources for set up?

Nobody mentioned that this might be fun to try. Get, borrow, and make some very basic tools, give it a try on a beater, and who knows, you might be a natural. Rank amateur here, and I find it fun and challenging, especially since anything you mess up can be corrected. And not everyone needs professional specs on their guitar.

Ed M

Ed, Good point! I've thought about it for years, but I'm more worried about the learning curve now.

I did find some builds for a leg (pattern makers) vise.

https://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/vie ... se#p706594

Hi David - I didn't mean to discourage you but truth be told there is significant risk in attempting to refret a fleet of valuable, beloved personal instruments when one has not been trained in the methodology.

Maple boards depending on the vintage often chip up enough during a refret that they need to be refinished and that's a huge addition to time and complexity as well as some safety concerns with using lacquer.

Set up resources I would Google. I know Fender has specs for how they suggest an instrument be set-up on line. Everything from the back corner gap of the trem to action is covered on the Fender site.

Now flat frets does not necessarily require a refret. I've dressed out frets no taller than .015" before. A fret dress is an operation where we create/mill a new level set in the fret plane, mill in relief where we want it, recrown each fret, polish them up and she's as good as new and even better because we can level a fret plan a lot better than a stinkin f*ctory can.

Now fret dressing is an art too and not something that I can or will attempt to detail here. We used to teach that too when we had time. It's usually less than half the cost of a refret too giving you some idea how much less effort is involved. But it's a precision operation where a well thought out sequential approach pays off.

Good luck to you.