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Posts: 2879
Joined: Jan. 30 2007
From: London (the South of it), England
nasty frets!!!
Hello everyone
I have a question about fret levelling and dressing.
imagine the situation.... a six month old guitar made in spain, been in uk since august. Lots of buzzing and difficult to play.
1. fret rocker reveals lots of uneven frets 2. frets levelled, recrowned and dressed etc 3. guitar sounds awesome again. like new. 4. guitar played for 3 hr dance class. 5. checked frets again after and they're a mess again!!!
how can that happen? I checked the frets before I tightened up the strings again and the were perfect.
This may sound silly but I'm not an expert. 1. could the tension on the neck (once restrung after fret work) be unsetlling the frets? 2. could the 3 hrs playing in class unsettle the frets?
I will eventually be either refretting completely or replacing fingerboard but can't right now due to space and time. Im moving house soon and then will deal with this properly but I want some temporary success. and at least some mental grasp of whats going on. thanks
I made the guitar under the supervision of maestro Stephen Hill at his workshop in la herradura. yeah tightbond.
I initially had some issues with the ebony coming away from the soundboard beyond the tweltfth fret. this can probably be down to me perhaps going too easy on the glue when i originally made it. its been reglued and hasn't moved any further but the frets dont seem to want to settle.
quote:
Moisture? Air humidity? Dryness?
no doubt! but im just surprised, that only a few hrs after levelling the frets, they can be screwed again. but as i say this is only my first build so I'm no expert
quote:
Maybe due to Humidity the glue become unstable
interesting. I didnt know that was a possibilty.
the glue can be affected as easily by the humidit?
You can use a fingernail or a small block of hard wood to press on the fret end to see if the frets are seated tight in the slot. Sometimes a few frets can have loose ends and the slot can be worn too wide to seat the fret, then more of the fret works loose.
Quick fix is to press the fret end hard with a small wood block while giving a bit of CA glue along the edge of the fingerboard and along the fret. While still pressing wipe the away the glue that does not flow into the slot.
Loose frets will rock on the ends or sometimes in the center of the fret. If a fret rocks up and down in the CA glue it down. There's no sense in trying to level moving frets.
If the slots are too wide and you want to re fret, use a feeler gauge to measure the slot width and look for fret wire stock with a wider tang than the wire in the board now. If you can't find a proper fitting tang, you can use the same tang wire, but you have to get a jewelers pliers with a Vee shaped mouth and crimp a little wider set of burrs into each fret tang.
If a few frets are rocking pull them out use the same tang wire and use the pliers to crimp the tang. The pliers are not hard to find, email or call a jewelers supplier or some guitar repair suppliers sell the pliers. I think StewMac might stock them
Wow! In 45 years of building I've never heard of gluing in frets with Titebond. Epoxy..yes but Titebond? Nothing wrong with adding a little black epoxy at the ends to fill gaps but there's no substitute for a fret slot properly sized to the fret tang.
I agree. Generally there is no need to glue frets. I use a black shellac stick to fill the ends. That's all.
Titebond is not suitable for joining wood to metal, so I guess it was just acting as a filler. It sounds like the slots are too wide for the fretwire, so the solution would be to use a wire with a wider tang.
Sorry, no the frets weren't glued with tight bond. Definitely not. I was thinking about the ebony. Which I haven't really mentioned but it's in my head. My mistake. I think we may have used a little super glue perhaps. We used something but bit tight bond
Thanks for your post estebana. May come in useful down the line. And good points about the frets maybe moving independently. I never really considered that. Always thought it would be the fret board.
By the way. Luthiers Stephen hill and Pablo Requena, who ran the course I built the guitar on, have been, and continue to be extremely helpful. I just wanted to throw it out on here for some other opinions and chat..... Plus I don't want to keep bothering them constantly.:)
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