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Hi, Friends. I had a little goof up with some new fret wire the other day and I thought it might be helpful to beginners if I reported on it.

I purchased some very narrow fret wire for a current project--narrower than I had ever previously used. I always file a bevel across the top of each fret slot before setting in the wire, and I proceeded to file the same bevel I would normally use--not excessively wide or deep, but generous enough to prevent any seating problems. I deepened and cleaned each slot, too. I was happily tapping away on the third fret that I was installing when it seemed to stall out on me, just shy of seating in. There were no obstructions in the slot and the tang hadn't bottomed out. I just tapped too lightly. So, I corrected by giving it a very smart rap. This actually drove the narrow fret shoulder a bit down into the bevel--below the level of the fret board. YIKES! I immediately pulled the fret without incident and installed a fresh one with no problems, but I think this was a real learning moment for me. Just when you think you've got everything under control and you think you're doing a great job, something can go wrong. I might have cracked my fret board, or I might have widened a slot to the point of being useless. Fortunately, neither of those things happened. The replaced fret went in without incident.

I won't necessarily shy away from this extremely narrow wire in the future. It has its place on certain instruments. But I'll be much more careful about my bevels and the force of my hammer blows in the future.
Just offering a cautionary "heads up" to everyone.

You'd love the .040" mandolin wire I have...

I probably would! Most of all, I'd like to have enough experience to see these little potential problems coming at me, before they actually strike. But I've lived long enough to know that...well...we can't ever seem to live long enough to avoid every little unanticipated mishap that comes along. Thanks for your response.

Try grinding the barbs off of the wire.

The narrow stuff LMI and StewMac sell has a .023" or .024" tang, which means a snug fit in standard .023" slots. Any barb will have to be completely embedded in the wood, which means excessive force to pound it in if the fingerboard is already glued to the neck and/or extreme backbow if it isn't.

I also use a dremel wheel to cut little divots in the tang, and glue them in with hide glue to help mechanically lock in place.

What I'd like to see, would be fretwire with a smooth, barbless tang, but with holes through the tang, to give glue a bridge to grip the fret in the slot. I remember seeing a modified tang crimper that had a threaded setscrew added, so that the tang could be repeatedly set to a dimension.

Hello, Jescar, hello, Dunlop, is this mic working? Can you hear me?

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These are all good points and ideas. I happened to order this fret wire along with a pre-slotted fingerboard. Then a different fingerboard and fret wire set for another instrument. These were both narrow wires, but from different sources. Then I switched them out, using the first wire on the second board and vice versa. So, it's quite possible that the tang or the barbs were a little wide for the slot. However, I tested a fret on an off-cut from the board and it went in perfectly. I mounted the frets with the board off the neck (all but two frets), and the board doesn't show back bow beyond what I'd consider the usual. I clamped it flat to the bench for a day and it stayed flat. I have just a couple of fret ends that are slightly popped and I'll need to glue those down with a little CA. Those are all pretty routine procedures for me and none of it suggests tangs that are too wide. I think my problem was all in technique. I filed my slot bevels a little wider than optimal for this wire, and I got careless and tapped too lightly and then too hard with my brand new fret hammer. I'm pretty sure I won't make these mistakes again. They would have been easy to avoid if I had carefully thought everything true. But like I said in the first post, sometimes we get blind-sided in the middle of a seemingly routine task.