Official Luthiers Forum!

Don't want to hijack Todd's excellent thread about fingerboards, glues and warpage, so started a new one.

It seems many people are fretting their fingerboards, flattening them, and then gluing them to the neck. I'd like to know what methods you all are using to flatten those fretted boards. I tried that with my last one and didn't achieve very satisfactory results.

Anyone have any tips they'd be willing to share?

Thanks,

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George :-)

the board should flatten out when you apply it to the neck. What you are seeing is the compression factor. If you have thicker fret tangs than what the slots are , you will spring the fretboard. If you match the slot , the barbs will do this also but the force of the flattened board will get the barbs to bite.
I use a .0195 tang for a .022 slot. this helps to avoid major springing.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

The whole idea is to take the tension out of it before you glue it to the neck.

I do most of it flexing it by hand. You can also prop up the ends and clamp a bow in it overnight. It helps to put the clamp off center as the bow tends to be greatest where the frets are closer together.

It doesn't have to be perfectly flat but getting close leaves you with less tension in the neck and barbs that are better set.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

Hmm... perhaps I was closer to achieving satisfactory results than I thought.

What I did was I installed the frets, placed the board so that it spanned a block set at each end, and put weight in the middle of the board to flatten it out. In fact, I introduced a bit of backbow. Left it like that overnight and it was relatively flat when I released the tension the next day. Wasn't perfect, but better than it had been before.

Maybe I was on the right path?

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George :-)

You were on the right track, but next time use a clamp like Kent says, and introduce more than a little backbow. If you leave it like that over night, its a good chance that it will be quite straight when you unclamp it.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Good to know. Thanks for the replies.

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George :-)

I fretted my board yesterday (first time fretting).

I left the board clamped up overnight on a flat piece of granite, like this:


When I removed it this morning, it still had a bow in it. So I clamped with blocks on the ends to reverse the bow and will probably leave it like this the rest of the day then remove it and see if the bow is removed. Then I'll let it settle down with no clamps for a day or so and see if it will lay flat. It's currently clamped up like this:

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Looks like a good system, Darryl. I'd be interested in knowing how that turns out for you.

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George :-)

George, don't think I've perfected it.......I'm just doing something similar to what I've read Mario does.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

I believe Mario advocates 1/2" blocks. This is what I do now and it works fine.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck