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What is your favorite tool(s) for fret leveling and dressing?

Mike

If I'm leveling the whole board, I've always used a big flat file. However, lately I have used a diamond plate which gave a much smoother surface. 4 new builds, I used angle aluminum with 320 stuck to it and level under string tension. Works great.

4 crowning I use a contoured 300 grit diamond file.

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Pat

This one-off file that weighs a ton. Dan Erlewine sent it to me back in the 80's, when StewMac was developing some new fret files. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!

http://s588.photobucket.com/user/studemax7/media/eBayJuly002.jpg.html?sort=3&o=80

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Frank Ford's suggestion, well flattened no.5 plane body and abrasive, any grit you need or want.
Crowning, SM 300/150 grit cranked diamond file is the best I've tried so far.

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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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXfyVb3L3G0
check at 25:50 for prepping the board.

I have learned that good fretting is all about the prep. Once the fretboard is prepped I fret. I also use a diamond block.
33:40 check there for the leveling

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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

Dan and others have moved on over the years in how they level and dress frets and so too have we. These days any leveling method that does not address the entire fret plane as a whole is not going to produce the results of a method that does address the entire fret plane at once.

By the way Dan has a PLEK now and Dan also is behind the Stew-Mac "long beam" steel fret leveler and the radiused fret leveler which again both address the entire fret plane at the same time.

We like 1" X 2" aluminum stock that has been flattened on a calibrated surface plate. This takes some time and effort mind you but the cost is pretty low. Safe the edges as well.

If I knew some years ago what we know now we would be buying our leveling beams from OLFer Murray and you can find his excellent leveling beams on eBay under "technofret" not to be confused with technocrat..... His pricing is excellent too and these are now my first choice to recommend for fret leveling.

We have four OLFers coming to our shop in less than two weeks now for our fretting course. These guys purchased the beams from Murray and some of them had them shipped to us so we have had the opportunity to check them out on our calibrated surface plate and they are very, very well made and super flat! Highly recommended!!!

You will need a long beam that spans the 1st through the 12th and a shorter beam that spans the 12th through the last and that will take care of the leveling.

Spot leveling which any device that only spans some of the frets at any one time and the L-channel leveler that Rick Turner turned the OLF onto around 9 years ago were never meant to be solutions for a precision fret leveling and dress. This applies to using files as well. They are solutions for on the spot, on the road, repairs but even questionable there if the root cause is frets that are not glued down well. Sure you can get results that permit a set-up to be done but if you don't use bluing to mark progress and long beams you will never really know just how level your entire fret plane is in respect to the natural straight edges of the strings.

You will find many methods used by many Luthiers including the guy who wanted us to use his "stone" on his $75,000 D'Aqisto. I told him that this was an unsound practice and we won't do it even for money... He went to another top rated shop and they told him that his stone was an "unsound practice" and I am quoting the story as he told it to us after apologizing and asking us to do it our way with long beams. He now has action of 2/64th" and >2/64th" and is happy as a clam. By the way he used to play with Joe Pass..... and his requirements are possible but your game has to be very, very sharp.

That's our favorite for leveling for crowning, dealing with ends, cutting fret wire, polishing, etc. requires many, may other tools so I have limited my answer to leveling only to try to keep things focused.

Give Murray's beams a try and you will be glad that you did. When it comes time to replace ours we won't be making them anymore since we can earn $85 and hour repairing and instead simply clicking on the "buy" button for Murray's excellent beams.

Currently I use a 12" radius block with sandpaper, but I'd like to get a long beam from Murray or Stew-Mac. Something that maintains contact with all frets in order to keep them on the same plane.

I use the SM long beam with 320 sticky back paper, and a 300 grit diamond hone for the FB extension. Great results!

I resisted the SM long beam for a long time and now there is no going back for me. I guess they make an AL one? I like the steel because it's heavy and the weight of it does a lot of the work.

I used a 2' level that had been flattened on both edges. I put 60 grit on one side and 400 grit on the other. I used a 2' Starrett 1/4" straight edge to check straightness.

Before I learned about leveling with a precision surface plate I used a level too, 24" and it worked very well for me. I imagine that had I leveled it, the level perfectly flat it would have been even better.:

It's often the case that there is a kick-up of the fret board extension. You will see this on just about every Fender style bolt on neck electric you will look at.

In the acoustic guitar world some builders and even some f*ctories are known to produce that dreaded "body hump" where there is a hump in the fret board and fret plane at the body joint.

In either case a beam, plane soul, level, what ever that is longer than the 1st through the 12th will register on the proudest frets it encounters. If these are at the body joint or over the body you will be milling your arse off for a long time to knock those proud frets down before the beam or what ever starts to hit some of the frets between the first and the 12th.....

As such and because of the benefits of fall-away we mill it into everything that we do and we often address fall-away first so that when we deploy the long beam it's not a useless endeavor and we have a shot at actually hitting the frets between the 1st and the 12th.

Make sense?

Or, in other words, it's easier to address fall-away first and then go for leveling the fret plane. If the beam is longer than the 1st through the 12th it will hit the body frets first which is not what we want and takes longer to do than milling in fall-away for the 12th through the last first. We often use a file initially for this in that we can more aggressively remove material but without scratches in that a good, sharp file leaves a shiny surface that is very near scratch free. Once the heavy lifting is done by the file we go to a short beam with progressively finer paper.

Food for thought: With fall-away induced are there:

1) a single, straight fret plane
2) two different fret planes
3) three different fret planes

The weiner wins a can of OLF truss rod lube (not really but you get the notoriety of winning!)

#2, and hold the lube!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Great job Alex!!!!

Yep there are now two independent fret planes in terms of the fret tops:

The first is the first through the 12th and the second is the 12th through the last where fall-away was milled in.

Hesh - I have to point out, however, since there's "no money past the 12th fret" that, even given your lovely and detailed explanation, there is only one fret plane!

Kidding. You rock.

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

I actually got a SM steel 15" long beam leveler from the classifieds but haven't tried it yet and been wondering if doing the whole fret plane at once would have a big impact. Good to hear all the positive testimonies and can't wait to try it now!

I noticed a big improvement when I started leveling under string tension with the L-channel. So, do you all who level with the strings off do it with some weight on the shoulders to simulate it? How important is that? (I remember TK or someone talking about using a 5lb? bag of shot on each side?)

2/64 without (much) buzzing??

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Pat

So what's the difference between 'fallaway' and the 'body hump'? From what I can understand, they sound like the same thing.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Fall away is intentional and body hump is accidental.

So then why is one bad and the other good? If you happen to do something accidentally that you were going to do intentionally, isn't that a good thing?

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Actually, fall away is the cure(along with a truss rod adjustment) for body hump.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

No, they are not the same. Body hump is when there is an area of the fretboard, where it meets the body, that is higher than the 1st 12 to 14 frets. The ideal situation is for the fretboard to actually be just a smidge lower from the 12th thru the last fret. That is called fall away.

I plane my fretboard after the neck is installed on the guitar, in order to get the correct planes of the fretboard. If you do it before installing the neck, you may get some changes in the area from the neck joint to the last fret due to mating up with the top.

No buzzing for the touch that he has. I likely could play it too since I can play with a very light touch when I want too. All things have to be perfect though and even the radius on the bridge has to be an exact match for the compound radius numbers in the bridge position.

Weights have been used for one reason or another through out time and mostly because Martin did not start putting truss rods in their instruments until the 70's. These instruments have to be "compression fretted" which is a process of installing some frets, noting the level of resistance that the fret tang gets from the slots and doing so in strategic places and then stringing it up again, several or more times tuning to pitch and noting the curvature of the neck and where.... It's very much a "touch" thing and one has to have the ability to "read the neck" as well. With the information noted and gleaned by observation more frets are installed and all the while any one of about 8 different tang widths are used where it makes sense.

You want more compression, a tighter tang fit, where you want to flatten out or back bow and less when you want more relief and forward bow.

It's an art of sorts and we do it frequently since we are Martin authorized and live in a community with thousands of Martins.

Instruments with truss rods should never need to be weighted to dress or install frets. We rarely weight anything including compression fretted Martins with the methods that we use.

It is one of the operations that instead of sequentially doing this and then that the power of observation is key all along the way. It's also fun and I enjoy it because unlike with a truss rod we have the ability to really shape a fret plane exactly as we wish with more or less relief right were we might want it. Truss rods make their contribution where they can based on their design and that's not always where we want it....

Back to fretting or leveling under string tension. Sure the neck jig is for this but remember that we are the guys who even though we have a neck jig we don't use it and think that it's not necessary beyond being a good teaching tool with visual indicators.

Builders should never have to fret or dress under string tension and if anything what a pain in the arse it must be to do it that way.... You have the advantage of being able to completely shape the board on the ax prior to installing a single fret. You also have the advantages of two way rods (recommended) and simply fretting to a level standard not under tension will pull into relief under tension and the rod can be used to tweak as you wish.

Believe it or not the better one is at understanding how to do great fret work the easier it becomes and faster too.

I'll add that again because of the solitary nature of the trade many methods are out there, some better than others, and some folks can go decades with no input from anyone else depending on their local market and location. You will find all levels of professional work out here from dangerous hack to Master Luthier and deservedly so.

Some good answers guys about the hump question.

Yep body hump is what we see when a builder or f*ctory does not get the geometry of a well built acoustic guitar.

Inducing fall-away can be a cure for body hump if it's induced and addressed prior to fretting so the hump is milled out of the board on the guitar. We can improve the fret plane and induce fall-away on the frets only if the instrument has already been fretted but the hump still exists with the board and is not really cured since it's still there.

Why it's important is that the area of the extension over the body is very close to the mid point of the speaking length of the strings. This is also where the string lash or amplitude of the wave is greatest so any proud frets will have a better chance of physical contact with the lashing/vibrating string. Buzzzzzzzzzzz....

Even though lots of you guys build acoustics only many players of acoustics these days use the frets over the body hence the cut-away.

Fall-away is also important if not key.... to low action as well even if you never use the body frets again because of the location being where the strings lash the most. It's also pretty close to where we dig-in with a pick or what ever again creating increased amplitude in the vibrating wave.

A lack of fall-away and you only need say .010" from the 12th to the last is one of the single most common reasons why a player cannot get the action cleanly as low as they want be it electric or acoustic. As such it's one of the greatest limiting factors for the set-up of the instrument but easily addressed and eliminated. Folks just have to want to do so and have the knowledge of it's existence and the remedy and benefits.

Sorry I still can't quite get it. This how I have understood what people are saying. Both are drawn exactly the same, except the 'body hump' one has the neck rotated slightly more (or a lower bridge - same thing). In that case, the only difference between them would be the angle of the strings relative to the upper fret plane. I've probably got this totally wrong in my head, but I want to understand.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

Food for thought. If you imagine where we want relief and then divide the string into two halves at the 12th on the body side of the 12th there is no relief or ability to induce it. Fall-away in a way acts as relief in this region over the body for the very same reasons and helps prevent the strings from contacting the frets.

PS: The harder the hitter the more fall-away likely will be required.... If you build for bluegrass players better include some fall-away...

Peter now if you take your excellent drawings and lower the stings to very low at the nut the first drawing if you also add relief between the 1st and the 12th and it will be accurate to what a good fret plane looks like.

The action at the 12th will still be greater than the action at any fret prior to the 12th (unless the neck is a banana with too much relief) and the action after the 12th will be progressively greater.

Again you can also imagine fall-away as relief after the 12th that never rises because the frets terminate where they do. If we fretted all the way to the saddle you would see what I mean by the analogy of relief after the 12th.

The amount of fall-away is minimal but necessary and again we are only talking about the thickness of three 3M post-it notes or around .010".

Make sense?