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I'm using a maple finger boarder the first time and it seems to me that it should have some kind of finish on it.
Is that correct and if so what do y'all recommend?

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Say what you do, Do what you say.

They will get dirty pronto without some kind of finish. If you'd like to do a thin finish, TruOil will build pretty fast. You could also try shellac, or lacquer.

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

What Chris said. So you have lots of choices.

Fender likes to fret the thing and then make it unserviceable by spraying finish over the frets....

Rick Turner RIP recommended and would use Waterlox so we tried it on refretted fender maple necks and we and our clients like it too. Waterlox is very easy to apply as well being a wipe on.

Curious about this as I have one coming up as well.

If you finish before fretting, how do you keep it out of the fret slots? If you finish after fretting, how do you get it off the frets?

It's easy enough to take one of those fret slot cleaning tools and just run it through each slot to clear out any finish imho. Fretting after finish does require more care because it's easy to mar the finish. Each has it's own I think. I just don't like gumming up the frets with finish.

If you keep the finish thin with only a few coats of lacquer there will not be enough build up in the fret slots to cause any problems. On a recent maple fretboard, I applied the finish and then before fretting, I hit the slots with a triangle file so that the insertion of the frets would not place any stress on the lacquer which might lead to cracks.

We did a number of maple board refrets with fretboard refinish, as well as unfinished necks that needed finishing. We prepped the board and then shot two very thin coats of shellac, fretted (generally with stainless wet-set in med CA or nickel silver in hot hide), beveled the fret ends, wiped on a bit of shellac to seal any raw wood that popped up, final prepped the board, then shot toner and topcoats in lacquer. Once set, we ran through a normal level/crown/polish. No issues with playability if that last step is done.

I have seen new guitars from assemblers of Fender-style guitar parts come in with lacquer still covering the fret crowns... so we billed the customer for removal. Keep a bottle of acetone and some towels handy to clean the dead lacquer off the fret file unless the lacquer is so well cured that it pops off the fret.

Finally, one of the apprentices here built a guitar with highly figured birdseye maple fretboard, redwood top, and curly ash sides and back. I heard about this guitar, and thought that with those materials, it should not have worked, but upon seeing it changed my mind. A lovely thing. Stainless frets on a lacquered board, and very comfortable to play for fingerstyle/fingerstyle blues work.



Watco is a thinned medium-oil varnish; you can take just about any tung or phenolic-based varnish and make it a wiping varnish by thinning with a compatible thinner/reducer. The primary advantage to Watco or other wiping varnish for the job is that it does not build all that fast, so it is easier to fret after finishing the board. Another advantage is a slow build in gloss as well, so for a satin neck on plain-figured stock, just stop applying at the desired level of gloss. If you want a finish that may be buffed to a higher gloss, build the 10-20 coats, wait a few weeks for a full cure of the varnish, and sand/buff.

Overall, it is much faster to shoot a lacquer finish over the fretted board than build a full-thickness finish with a wiping varnish, but for a minimally finished neck, Watco or similar is pretty fast and easy to do.

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For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

I've refretted Fender maple necks and have done all the fretting, leveling and crowning, then resprayed the finish over the board and frets. Last step is to scrape the crowns with a box cutter blade.