I was out of the workshop all morning and had another small job to finish so didn’t manage as much as I would have liked.  However I made a start on the fret-board.

The first, and probably most important step, make sure the fret-board is perfectly flat.

With the neck flat I always mask up the fet-board with low adhesive tape to protect it while working.

I’ll then mark the tops of each fret with a marker pen so I can see where the flat beam is touching and which frets are too low.  Using adhesive backed abrasive paper and a calibrated straight beam I’ll file down the fet-tops evenly…

You can see here where the beam is starting to grind fret-wire away and where the wire is too low and hasn’t yet been touched.  I’m taking the tops off the middle two frets, you can still see the worn low points but the outside two have hardly been touched.  There is a long way to go yet.

About half way.  I’m touching the tops of the frets but there are still some low very worn spots..

Worse still, further up the neck I’m still not touching the fret-tops.  You can see the low, worn spots on the 11th, 12th and 13th frets but I’m still not touching the tops of the 8th or 9th frets.  Still a long way to go…

Getting there at last.  Just the low spots on the 7th to 10th frets… 

A little more, almost done…

And there we have it.  The frets are now all completely level.

The trouble is, I’ve had to remove so much metal each fret is now this shape…

So what I have to do is file away the squared off shoulders to make a round fret top.  Being careful not to take anything off the top, otherwise I’ll be back where I started, with uneven fret heights!  Something like this….

I’ve run out of time today so It’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow.  I’ve started by marking up the tops again so I can see what I’ve touched….

Keep watching…..

To see where I started and see the job in full so far click here.