Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm sure this subject has come up before but I couldn't find the thread. I've made my Honduras RW f'board, cut the fret slots and bound it with offcuts from the board and a single maple veneer. What do people do to prevent the veneer strip getting grubby with use? And do you do it before or after installing the frets? This is what it looks like at the moment.

My fretboards are designed in the same way and I use thin CA glue to seal the maple veneer. I also use maple marker dots and seal them as well with CA. Works fine for me.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Merci Alain, I'll give it a try.

I just let it get grubby. I have never seen a grubby one that looked bad or out of place, if the owner of the guitar is not a horribly disgusting person i dont think it will ever be a problem.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

I avoid using maple.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Hi Howard, do you mean you avoid white purfling or that you avoid maple and use something else like holly? This is actually English sycamore that I got from the UK, they only had that and maple. I don't like grubby but I'm just pernickety. It does seem that you only have to look at maple for it to get grubby!

HI Dave, had the same problem - after clean up following fretting, it did become a bit better foolowing the lemon oil treatment, but would still be interested in solutions.

Hi Dave, as I understand it, English sycamore is maple (Acer pseudoplatanus). As for sealing with CA, test on scrap first with offcuts from the rosewood and maple and the CA you intend to use to make sure the rosewood doesn’t bleed.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Arnt, you may well be right. The veneer came from Anita Marquetry (very helpful and generous with the sizes) who list sycamore and maple separately. Perhaps the sycamore is English and the maple is American. They also have shell and Abalam. I did test the CA (Zap super thin) and had no problem with staining.