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I did the fret job on my tele build a week ago and ended up butchering it. Now I need to pull the old frets and start over. I read through tutorials and thought I had a decent understanding, but admittedly, it's been a month or so since I went through the tutorials and I was in a bit of a rush to get this part started.

I've gotten some advice from a few other people on how to proceed with the next go around, but I'd love to hear your advice on how to proceed with my next fret job. Here's how I proceeded before:

After radiusing the fb with my stewmac radius sanding block, I hammered/pressed in the frets. A couple of points about this- I found out later that I hammered in incorrectly. I started in the middle and worked outward, which is apparently incorrect. Then I used a C clamp and piece of wood to press in the frets the rest of the way. I think during the hammering and pressing I used too much force and flattened some of the frets, so I know to be more gentile next time.

Also, during my radius process, I pencilled a mark down the center of the fb to know when I got to where I need to be, but by sighting down the fb from the heel, it appears that one side may be slightly lower than the other.

So after pressing in frets, I used my stewmac fret rocker to find the high frets and marked them accordingly. I then used a piece of granite that a friend milled for me as a leveller. I taped 180 grit and started sanding. Then really started going horribly wrong from there. I had some frets that ended up very flat while others were hardly touched. Not sure how this happened since my leveller is flat and runs almost the entire length of the fb.

Lastly, I need to know if there are any tricks to pulling the old frets. Do I just use my fret nippers and pull them out, or is there something else.

Thanks so much for any and all help!

I'm not an expert and probably can't help much. But I'm curios what kind of hammer you were using?

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Jim Hansen

Perhaps the best thing would be to get the "Fretwork Step by Step" book and the fretting series of DVD's from Stew Mac. Sounds like a lot of issues need to be addressed and these references should answer all your questions. Good Luck!

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

It was a stewmac fretting hammer

Try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-YkmK-UEV0&feature=related and other related videos on youtube.
A level fretboard is essential before fretting.
Best advice I can think of for fret removal is make sure you bevel the slots before fretting. This also helps the frets to seat fully as the tang has a radius where it meets the top of the fretting.
I use a triangular file, edges to middle, to prevent breakout at the ends.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... tting&aq=f
There are a few things besides this vid you need to know . 1 and most important , it is about prepping your fretboard . Use chalk on the board next time instead of pencil . Now as I said it it all about prep. First and foremost is get the neck straight . Radius and be sure your neck is true . If I happen to have a 1 way truss rod I will throw a slight back bow in the neck so that I can have some forward adjustment later.
Once you are happy with the neck geometry be sure your fret slots are deep enough. Don't just measure out in the middle check the entire slot . It the slot is shallow you can't get the frets to seat. I use fish glue but any water based glue will work for working in the fret. Remember that glue is a lubricant when wet . The glue will also help fill voids and toughen the end fibers in the wood. Lay in a bead of glue lightly tap the end and then work the fret in working from one end to another .
Have a good support under the working area , if the fretboard is bouncing your not getting a good seat on the fret . I glue in and seat the fret , rough trim the fret and proceed to the next fret . clean up the glue as you go along . A toothbrush does a great job for this after about an hour when the glue starts to set up. Once the glue sets up you need to true the frets and here is where the work in prepping the board pays off . The fret board will tell the frets how they lay and if the board is not planed and radiused properly ,the frets are not controlled .
Now that the frets are in you must adjust the truss rod so the neck is straight . [ NOTE: IF you have a 1 way truss rod , you need a touch of back bow ( .010) from the 7th fret to the nut is all you need . This allows you to have forward adjustability if you would need it later. ] I use a sharpie pen to mark the frets and use a long straight edge file or a diamond sharpening stone that I know is flat and start to work this up and down the neck . The file I like is called a PILLAR FILE 10 inch fine , I want to see the top of the frets loose the black. As long as you removed the black ink you know you have them planed . DO NOT WORK A FEW FRETS at a time go up and down the neck. Once all the tops are dusted off ., If you want to use the radius block remark the frets and lightly rework the frets . My feeling is , if the board was well radiused you don't need to reradius and don't use a short radius block , that can cause a dip in the fret plane , you want a long true block for this .
Once you are happy with the rough dress you can now remark the frets and recrown them. I will leave a thin black line . Before you recrown sight down the neck and look at what it looks like . Check with a straight edge . Look close to any gaps and if you see them you need to work the entire fret plane . I don't use a fret rocker I just use a machinist scale . You can get a false read on the short things and if you chase a single high fret you can cause some trouble for yourself. Once recrowned you want to dress off the ends and polish the frets.
Hope this info helps.

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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

Did you check your granite against a good straightedge?

A friend of mine does granite counters & I had him cut me a piece to use as a leveler but it wasn't as straight as I had hoped. The slab was perfectly flat but the piece we cut out wasn't. Granite is like wood with internal stresses.

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

What are you backing the neck up with when you hammer in the frets? A bag of kitty litter works well, buck shot is the best. I don't think hammering from the center out has any thing to do with the problem you are having. Are your fret slot widths matched up to the fret wire you are using?

As for pulling frets, go to a hardware store and buy some end nippers, mount them in a vice while closed and file off the leading edge bevel so that they are nice and smooth and flush. That is your fret removal tool.

Can't tell you how much I appreciate the help, guys. Thanks for such a thorough post, John. There are some things I've done right, but there are a lot of things that I did wrong or simply neglected to do. Thanks to the info I've gotten here, I have a much better picture of how to proceed.

Kevin, I'll double check my granite piece. It never occurred to me that it might not be flat. Thanks for the info.

The tools I have at my disposal are the granite leveller, 3' aluminum straight edge, 3' level, stewmac radius block, stewmac fret hammer, fret nippers, neck bow gauge that I fashioned out of another aluminum straight edge, stewmac crowning file.

I'll be pulling my frets later this week, and then I'll take my time to make sure my fb is properly prepped. I can see now that there's a lot of stuff in this step that I failed miserably at. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to straighten me out. I'm not afraid to admit my faults of impatience and my ignorance on the guitar building front, so hopefully you'll find me very teachable

A couple tips I can offer - and all of them mirror those already offered....

As everyone has already said - the better job you do on levelling the fretboard on the neck, the better your fretwork will come out.... I check my fretboard by "Candling" the radiused surface against a precision straight edge... I do this just like you would candle a jointed edge of a back or top, but I go all the way across the fretboard.... My Starrett hasn't done me wrong yet.... You will find that after sanding, there are still humps and shallow spots - even when using a long sanding block.... It's an effect of hand pressure on some certain spot when holding the sanding block.... The straight edge makes it real easy to find these places..

Fretboard slot prep helps too - I found that using a very sharp chisel to just barely nip the sharp corner at the edge of the fret slots helps prevent them from sticking up from the wee radius on the bottom of the fret tang....

The next thing I found helped me a whole lot was to use a real fret bender instead of trying to bend the frets by hand.... They need a radius that's slightly tighter than the fretboard so the ends don't stick up...

Then, a little glue in the fret slots to help slide them in and to keep them stuck down....

Next was to press each one in with a block of soft wood - I found that a plain 'ole piece of soft pine 1" x 2" stock works real well... I found pressing them in by hand rather than hammering ended up with far less dented/bent frets....

Paying attention to details like these seriously cuts down on the amount of levelling/crowning you have to do after fretting....

Thanks

Two more things I forgot to mention. Check the straightness of your Stew Mac fret rocker, the one I got was definitely not straight so I had to level it myself. And, when you use a fret board radius block don't stroke the block on the same side of the guitar through out the whole process. Take 10-20 strokes on the low E side then flip the guitar around and take 10-20 on the high E side. That will help prevent you favouring one side of the board with unequal pressure causing you to sand off more on one side.

That was something else I failed on . I can't wait to get started on board prep/fret v1.2