My wife, the Luthier
by David P. Wescott
Back from paint - ready for the final fretwork
I did the fretwork yesterday and that was going to be it for the updates, but... I had a little change of plan and I think I might be making something else for it... so much for this being the last update lol!
While I realize my pics aren't going to show everything, cut me a break as fretwork is tedious and sometimes I just forgot to take the damn pics - lol!
Click images to zoom
Here's the fretboard as it looked when arrived from Mark. A very nice line with a little bit of the clear going over the binding for me to clean up in this stage.
Yep, Mark knew exactly what I wanted...
Just a quick shot to show you how I check to make sure the neck was straight (I was checking against the board, not the frets).
I made some covers to protect the finish...
....and used a marker to blacken the fret tops to make it easy to see exactly where I was hitting.
Pretty easy to see, eh?
After getting everything to a nice even leveling, I shaped the frets with this tool from Stew-mac that makes this step soooo easy! Frets are still looking rough...
...so I used 320 grit and smoothed them all out just taking my time and watching that I don't take off from the "crest" of the fret. Here's after smoothing with the 320 grit.
More frets shaped and sanded.
Now on to polishing! The variable speed dremel and the remote attachment is a wonderful tool, no??
Gettin' shiny!
Now to pull the tape and clean up that fretboard - first we file...
...then we scrape the binding.
Ooooohhh, how perty.....lol!!!
Close-up.
Again, please keep in mind this is not a tutorial as I skipped a few steps in the pics like doing the fallaway for the upper frets, etc....
Buy a fret book to learn all about it!!
