Official Luthiers Forum!

UPDATE: John C. everything went through fine so you are all set and thank you too!

Folks the Nov. 21st 2015 class is now completely booked AND the April 30, 2016 class is also completely booked!

We are considering putting on another class likely somewhere in between these two classes so if you have any interest please post in this thread so that we an see the interest level?

Many thanks!

Hesh I'll drop a check in the mail over the weekend, don't know whether to bring a flat top or a strat

Sure mailing is fine my friend.

Strats are very fun to refret because you can take the neck off making it very easy to handle. OTOH you will learn more from fretting an acoustic since that's what you build and there are specific things that are different about fretting an acoustic. Your choice though.

POKE POKE Hey Hesh ... check pm and email ! lololol

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It sounds like fun the fretting,not the anal probe part. BTW who is going to be the probee and who is going to be the prober? Well maybe we'd best leave that part up to you guys.


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Folks if you are attending one of our classes for fretting you will need to pick-up the Stew-Mac Jaws II tool and inserts.

http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Tools_by_Job/Fretting/Jaws2_Fret_Press_and_Inserts.html

The Jaws II comes with radius cauls including a 16' which is likely the most common. If you use a different radius check with Stew-Mac for availability of a matching caul for your desired radius. It's also a good idea to have the next, tighter radius too and these are useful for gluing down pesky fret ends with the tighter radius concentrating more on the ends. For example if you use a 16' it's a good idea to have a 14" too.

You will have the opportunity to use and try our diamond crowning files (Stew-Mac also) which we like very much and would recommend. It's also a good idea if you have crowning file to bring them as well.

A small three corner file with the edges safed is also going to be used in the class along with the Stew-Mac fret end shaping file so please pick these us as well prior to the class.

Another post about the leveling beams will follow in the next couple of days too.

Many thanks

The next thing that you will need is two long leveling beams because that's the method that we will be teaching.

You have three choices to obtain the beams:

1) Make them yourself. We used 1" X 2" aluminum bar stock and safe the edges. Where it gets laborious and very time consuming.... is you will also need a certified surface plate large enough to accommodate the entire length and then some for the longest of the two beams. You will need one approximately 18 - 19" long and another one 6 - 8" inches long.

The surface plate is covered in self-stick abrasive paper and the beams are marked up with marker and then they are burnished on the abrasives rotating them frequently and doing both 1" wide sides until according to the bluing, the marker ink they are perfectly flat or close. Tolerances of better than .001" are recommended.

When I started out as an apprentice I was tasked with flattening the beams and making a set for myself too.

It took me better than a week to do.....

For abrasive paper, self-stick you will need 80, 120, and 220. 80 is great for leveling the board and sometimes for fret board extensions that have a ski ramp and you want to mill it down quickly.

2) OLFer Murray has a company on eBay called Technofret and if you search eBay while logged in (so that the prices show up in US dollars) you will find his beams.

NOTE: Murray has VERY generously agreed to provide a 20% discount to folks taking our classes on his leveling beams! That's a great deal when his regular prices were already an excellent deal. The 20% discount is valid until the class date for the respective students in each class.

Please contact Murray for details on securing your discount. He should be along shortly to be available for any questions so post Murray questions in this thread please.

3) Stew-Mac also makes steel leveling beams. I've not seen or used a Stew-Mac beams prior so no opinions to offer beyond I never bought anything from Stew-Mac that did not represent excellent value to me. How's that for being diplomatic...

So there you have it three ways to obtain your leveling beams. Not only will these be key for fret work on new instruments they are also key for fret dressing and repair work as well. Mine get used every day and I even use mine for sanding saddles, nuts, anything that needs to be flat somewhere on it. They make handy bench top flat surfaces for sanding.

Thanks

Yes, just to confirm that I will be happy to supply these beams to any member taking Hesh's class at 20% off the Ebay price, and will be happy to answer any questions either here on the thread, or by PM, or by the Ebay question route.

Hi Murray,

Thanks very much for the discount. Just so I'm clear - is the tool we're talking about here the 19" Leveling Beam (as opposed to the Advanced Leveling System)?

--Bob

I've already got the StewMac leveling beam but it is steel so is heavy and a bit awkward to use. I have ordered both of the beams that Murray sales for the class - very reasonable with the 20% discount. Thanks Murray!

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yes, Bob, it is. The 2" x 1" beam is the tool Hesh will be using for tutorial purposes.

@Steve ... thanks Steve, your beams shipped out yesterday ... would have gone out on Monday but Monday was (yet another) public holiday in this town ...

Thanks Murray! I've got two guitars in finish so I'm looking forward to trying them out soon.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

What Murray says - you will need two beams, a long one 18 - 19" and a short one 6 - 8" and Murray has these available. A very sincere thanks from Dave and I to Murray as well for the discount to our students!!!!

You guys will also need self-stick abrasives put on the two 1" sides of your beams. For fretting a new instrument 120 and 220 would work. 80 grit is often very useful too for leveling the board prior to fretting AND for doing fret dresses on f*ctory built instruments where the fret work sucks so very much that you will be working too hard with 120.

We just did a Recording King that was brand new and had lots of loose frets requiring a fret dress. Fret work on factory instruments can be a mixed bag even if PLEKed..... go figure....

The abrasives will last for many guitars for just the fret milling and to a lesser degree for leveling the board. We likely will be changing abrasives on class day at some point so I wanted to let you guys know how to do this easily in case you want to try your beams prior to coming to class.

Try to peel off the old self-stick in as large chunks as you can. The residual can be sliced off with a single edged razor blade working away from you.... and with no hand or anything else of value down range. Final clean up is done with naphtha to get the old adhesive off the beam.

The beams are very durable by the way and for most small builders this will set you up with what you need to have superb fret work on your stuff. Superb fret works means that when you get that very picky player who wants uber low action you will have no worries that you can produce what they want.

I never attempted to travel with my beams and the airlines may think you to be a terrorist or something so you might want to ship them to us in advance and we can hold them for you until you get here. Just a thought.

In the next couple of weeks we will post a class syllabus and information on area hotels, amenities, etc.

Thanks again Murray!

Just to say that I am supplying 240 and 320 Klingspor aluminium oxide grit with these beams ... I normally supply one strip of each per beam, but for this project I am supplying three of each. The Klingspor Woodworking shop in Raleigh NC sell a 10 metre roll of grit from 40 to 600 for an average of 9-10 USD, with a flat postage rate (within the continental USA ) of $7.00 irrespective of size or weight of package, which is a pretty good deal IMO ...it costs me an arm and a leg to import the stuff into the UK !

It may well be of course that the StewMac Stickit abrasive will be the preferred choice of many ... I have never used it but I believe it is very effective and long lasting. I have always found the Klingspor abrasive to be very satisfactory ... it will be interesting to hear some comparisons when the class commences.

If I can pass on a tip which I may say modestly is my own discovery (leastways I haven't read it anywhere else) ... I have found that for ease of removal, first applying a low-tack (but not too low-tack) strip of 1" masking tape to the beam works well, and leaves much less residue to be cleaned off when the abrasive needs replacing.

Murray, my leveling beams with sandpaper strips arrived today - very nice and I really like the light weight as compared to the StewMac leveling beam. These will be my go to's for leveling from now on

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

UPDATE: We received two sets of leveling beams from OLFer Murray and let me tell you these things are very, very nice!!! We had made our own in the past and the lapping took me all of three days to do but never again...

We checked the accuracy of two of the beams on our calibrated surface plate and they are as good or better than the ones that we made and priced very reasonably too so next time I'm buying ours from Murray and saving myself three days!!!

Murray really nicely done, all the edges are safed and the things are as flat as can be. We measured better than .0005" accuracy!!! That's pretty impressive!!!

Robert/Bob your package from Stew-Mac arrived and we have it for you in our office. We didn't open it so let us know if you want us to check out the contents for completeness of your order?

Thanks

Hi Hesh,

Yes, please. I ordered 3 items: Jaws2, the smallest 3-corner fret file, the fret end file.

Thanks!!

--Bob

Hesh, I'm just thinking out loud.... do you think this is a show you could take on the road? Between DFW/Houston/San Antonio/Austin there are 15.1 million people within a 3 hour drive--you could probably sell out 3 consecutive workshops over a 10 day period. I need to come to this workshop worse than you can imagine. The course fee is very reasonable, but travel/transportation/lodging make it a 4 digit trip pretty quickly. Just thinking out loud, and trying how to get myself to Ann Arbor. --J

Hey J thanks for that but we have no inclination to make it a road show. Part of the reason why is that it's questionable for us if even teaching these classes in our shop is profitable in terms of the opportunity costs. We run a very busy repair business that many here have no idea is even possible in terms of volume and revenue.

In addition Ann Arbor is a destination that many folks enjoy coming to and that often means that the significant other won't push back either if they get to come and enjoy the offerings here.

What I noticed the most about your post and I thank you too for posting is what you said about how you would benefit from the class. When I was a builder only I knew my stuff was well received but I also felt that when it came to fret work and set-up I was getting by but likely clueless.... I was right, there is far more too it than I knew and worst of all I did not know enough to even begin to perceive the extent of what I did not know.

In other words I could not identify deficiencies in my own stuff because I also did not know what to expect from great work. My expectations where off.

This need not be an issue for the one time kit builder, etc. but if you sell or even give them away and it's important to you for your clients to have a very positive experience learning how to fret very well, do superb set-ups, etc. is super important and will also improve your building chops too now that you know where the eventual goal will be.

My hope is that you can take the class one day and if you can't feel free to PM me or email us and I am always happy to help folks as you know and you are no exception my friend.

PS: I love Austin and have been there many times!!!

UPDATE:

NEW CLASS OFFERING by popular demand!!!

Set-Up For Builders

This will be a one day, very hands on class at our shop in Ann Arbor and the class is engineered for builders who want to learn to do superb final set-ups on your stuff or any acoustic guitar for that matter. Material covered will be locating saddles/bridges, making nuts, cutting nut slots, making and compensating saddles, AND how to sequentially and perfectly set-up any acoustic guitar.

All materials (except the mule guitars that you will be working on so please bring one) will be provided and this includes strings, nut and saddle blanks, expendables, and of course the really important thing - lunch....

We will be doing two of these classes but this announcement is for the first class to be on May 1st, a Sunday and the day after our second fretting class.

Two of the four seats are already taken and the two other folks in the April 30th class will have dibs on the two remaining seats and I should know by the middle of next week if these seats are available.

The second class will actually be before the first class with a date to be determined and will likely be in February but again TBD. All four seats for this class will be open and it will be a Saturday. More to come on the exact date.

If you want to post your intent if space is available for the May 1st class please do so here and if the two remaining seats open up it will be first post first served so-to-speak.

For the February TBD class please also post your interest here as well and I will endeavor to pull it all together so that it makes sense for everyone.....

Many thanks!

Vive La France!

Hesh and Dave, Thank you very much.

Steve Smith and I signed up for the "fretting" class April 30 and when Ann Arbor Guitars offered the "builders set-up" class of course we were very interested and AAG very kindly scheduled back to back classes, saves us a trip, y'all need to jump in now
I'm bringing a willingness to listen and learn and possibly some legendary luthiers fluid we have around here.....

Thanks Clinch!! Much appreciated.

Regarding the legendary Luthiers fluid we have several gallons of unopened Everclear......

Looking forward to a lot of good learning and, of course, lunch

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Count me in for February Hesh.

Steve

UPDATE:

For the OLFers who are in our fretting class this Saturday we are all set and good to go and looking forward to a fun day with lots of learning and, of course, getting your four guitars completely fretted.

Please be at our shop at 9:00 AM sharp Saturday morning. The front door will be open and we are on the third floor so just come on up. The "OPEN" sign on the front porch will say "CLOSED" because we are not open on Saturdays so please disregard and come on up anyway.

We scheduled this class and all of our classes for that matter on a day when the University of Michigan does NOT have a home game. This means that all of the streets and traffic patterns will be the normal mess and you won't have to deal with the 110,000 people who attend every single game in the world's largest out door American style football stadium.

There are lots of cabs available in Ann Arbor and the Public Transportation bus system is very good, very clean, safe, etc. and has won all manner of awards though the years for being a decent experience. It's called "The Ride...." and services all the "hotel row" neighborhoods.

This is one of the busiest times of year for our repair business but we will have four benches with leg vices cleared and ready for you guys.

Everyone will be receiving a "kit" that we bagged up for you that will include some complementary things that you will need for the class but everything is yours to keep and take back with you too. Things such as a red "Marks-a-lot" marker, a protective shield for the guitar (dr*ad sized but will fit most others), packs of sand paper for old-school scratch removal, 0000 steel wool and a device that Dave invented for using the Jaws II tool in some of the places that it would not normally work well.

OLFer Murray who some of you bought your leveling beams from has also sent us action measuring gauges for us to distribute to you guys as a complimentary gift. Many thanks Murray!!!

We have a lot to do and it's our way to offer as much information as we can so please be prompt.

We will have coffee available and there are places all around us to get pop, etc. We will be having lunch brought in, so be hungry too... I'm always hungry.....

Regarding photos please feel very free to take all the photos that you want. It's a good way to document things that you may wish to reference later. Feel free to post photos too and all we ask is that you avoid taking photos of customer instruments.

There will be one instructor for every two students and both Dave and I plan on being very hands on in helping to get things done.

FYI your fretting journey will be in a shop that has been a guitar repair shop for around 34 years now. It's the second location of a local business that launched the career of Dan E. of Stew-Mac notoriety and a host of others as well. Back in the day Ann Arbor was the home of Iggy Pop and the Stooges. This location where you will be has been visited in the past by John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and many other famous musicians. Clapton was there with the paisley SG. So if you are into karma expect some pretty good karma.

Should be a great time and we are looking forward to meeting those of you that we have not met before and seeing others who we have met again.

Let me know if you have any questions about the class, location, or Ann Arbor in general?

Safe trips for you all too!