Official Luthiers Forum!

I have always found using sharpie ink (straight) when crowning frets that when I get to a thin line in top and stop, quite a wide top actually remains on the fret (I use 12x magnifying glasses)
This seems to be because the sharpie deposits quite a thick layer of ink.
Recently, when wiping off the ink with a paper towel, damp with meths, it left a noticeable "trace" of the ink all over the frets, much thinner.
So using this, I finished off the crowning with the 300 grit crowning file to a fine line of this thin layer of ink in the middle of the top of the fret.
Result was a much thinner line on the top of the fret, very quickly and easily polished up (I leveled the frets to 600 grit) with 3 finest sides of a 4-sided micro-mesh stick I use to polish up the sides of the frets shaped by the crowning fie.

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“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.” - Emile Zola

We don't use Sharpies and don't like them much either mostly because of the risk of getting some on somewhere that we don't want it AND the tenacious nature of Sharpie ink.

Marks-a-lot is our current fav and I just bought four of them for the kits that we are giving to our students at our fretting class later this month.

We also don't use ink for crowning or to work that line that we speak of. Instead simply adjusting the position of your work light and adjusting your perspective and you can see pretty easily the status and integrity of the fret crown top, the line if you will.

One of the reasons why we are no longer working with any ink for crowning is that we don't want the ink residue to gum up the crowning files and it tends to do exactly that.

With the Marks-a-lot ink the vast majority is removed in the leveling process and the little bit that may remain on the sides of the frets get's nixed with either the crowning files or the first sanding with 320.

Anyway try crowning without ink and by repositioning the work light and your perspective. It works like a charm!

Is that permanent or dry wipe-off Marks-a-lot?
Yes, I find the Sharpie ink gums up the diamond fretfiles a bit, but a quick wipe with a brass wire brush and a meths wet cloth soon removes it and the cuttings both.
Meths seem to get it off pretty much anything, RW FBs, fingers, whiteboards etc.
Marks-a-lot not so widely available in UK, mostly Amazon at 24 for $24 so not so cheap even in bulk.
Try it with no marker ink - with my eyes!

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“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.” - Emile Zola

What exactly is "Meths"? Is it denatured alcohol?

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

God, I hope so! Otherwise, it sounds like you've all "broken bad". [FACE WITH STUCK-OUT TONGUE AND WINKING EYE]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

LOL not to mention how to get the dead guy out of the basement....

Colin yes it's Marks-a-lot "permanent" and we use red for no other reason than that's what my local butcher carries in his store.

And yes again and I wish that you were here or I was there because I could show you hoe to manipulate the work light so that the untouched fret top really stands out. I don't have great eyes and I can see it pretty clearly so I am sure that you could too.

Good guess!

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“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.” - Emile Zola

Who'yo callin' a hoe!!



Yes, I can use my work lights to see the untouched fret top, stands out fairly well, but just don't like to strain my tired eyes.
To each their own?

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“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.” - Emile Zola

See how bad my eyes are...... Darn spell checkers substituted a word for me and I didn't catch it......