Official Luthiers Forum!

Right Rich and this means that you really have to fret the fret board first or fret the neck with fret board installed but with the neck off the guitar.

If you do fret the fret board first it's a good idea to level the fret board with a radius block/beam with the fret board on a surface plate or a checked-out wing of a table saw or anything that you can verify is very flat first.

I did not read Mario"s article so this may have been in there but i just finished a jig based on his fretting jig. It allows you to press the frets in with some glue and leave them in under pressure until the glue dries. This does help eliminate backbow on the unjoined board and it allows you to fret while doing something else. Here is the jig:


You can see also the brass set of radius cauls. It goes from 7.5(I think)-flat in half degree increments so pressing in a compound radius board can be done no problem. I got these from John Watkins and they are ruling. The de-staco clamps lock down in place to leave the fret under pressure in the jig.



Here is a close-up.



As an extra bonus feature it works as a really excellent purfling laminator also. The 4 cauls give the most even pressure, since I have used it I am getting much less twisting in spots than I did with a lot of clamps. Plus it doesn't take the edge of my bench to glue them up.



I just finished it and haven't used it yet for fretting but i am excited to pretty soon. On this one I also routed out some 1/4 by 3/32 cavities under the board and after it is fretted I am going to run strips of CF epoxied in while clamped flat. After some CF tests I did I am interested to see how stiff I can get the flat fingerboard before joining it to the neck.

_________________
Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

I have done both ways too and have found that I prefer fretting after setting the neck. In fact I don't even radius the fret board till after the neck is set. I have had to deal with the hump problem as others have mentioned and for me it's just not worth it. For the frets over the guitar top I cut the slots a lot wider and glue them it with yellow glue. I cut the frets to near the exact length and hold a chunk of iron on the inside of the guitar under the fret board and tap the frets home. I tend to cut slots a bit wider along the neck and glue frets in to help prevent back bow and I always use a double action truss rod though to date have never had to set one in reverse.

I also finish the guitar after fretting so even if I do make a fretting ding it's easy to repair. I can't say that it's any harder for me to fret on the guitar vs off either but I don't have any fancy fretting tools. A bag of kitty litter, a hammer, radius blocks, files and a chunk of iron works for me. Some day I'd like to have a nice press.

I vote for fretting after. I hate re-crowning frets (with a file) so I do everything possible to make sure that I don't have to. For me this means carving the neck before attaching the fingerboard - or at least relieving as much stress as possible by heavily chamfering the shaft, radiusing the fingerboard after carving, careful prep-work etc. I've only had to re-crown maybe 6 frets in the last several hundred necks.

Burton that is a great looking jig but the fret board is absolutely beautiful!!!