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Hello,


This question may not be specific to EnduroVar, but I wanted to make sure it was clear what type of finish was used.

I have some chips along the FB edge where the finish has chipped off. My plan was to wick some CA in to stabilize the raises area, sand lightly and then brush on some finish to try to repair this. I'm hoping I can feather the two together and make it look reasonable. Is that the best way or is there a better option?



Thanks!
Brad


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I'm surprised to see you finished the neck before installing the frets although I suppose it makes no difference except you risk more chipping when dealing with the fret ends. I would fret the guitar then grind, file, sand (whatever you favor) the finish away along with the fret ends and do a touch up from there.

Thanks. It's a re fret. It's my first build and I'm supposedly "fixing" it.

But yeah, when I got it back from the owner there were spots that you see in the pick that we're starting to lift up. Then I believe when I went to radius and level the board I knocked them off with the radius block and that is what I saw when I turned the guitar around.

I'll give it a shot. I also ordered some glu boost but I suspect this is too big of a repair to fix with it.


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We fret after finishing and assembly, which allows a final leveling of the board. On new guitars, we bevel the edges of the board prior to fretting - roughly .020" wide - which prevents any possibility of a chipped edge. All of our fretboards are bound, faux-bound, or pocketed, so fretting is just exactly like a refret, which is a routine operation here in any case.

We don't have a lot of experience with Enduro-Var yet - our first guitar with that finish on the neck was delivered just last week, but it touches up like other urethanes with CA, and drop-fills with Enduro-Var like lacquer. If the chipping is extensive, scraping the loose material off, scuffing, reshooting a few coats, then beveling the edge and fretting might take less time than a bunch of CA touchups.

Another trick is to tape the fretboard surface about an 1/8" in from the edges, then when stripping off the tape, pull inward to get a clean release well a way from the fragile edges. Lightly beveling the edges as mentioned above cuts the residual finish on the top of the board loose and pretty much eliminates the sort of chipping you are seeing. The remaining finish is removed when the board is final-leveled and polished through P800.

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You can ostensibly get a similar result if you fret first, by scraping the chamfer between frets after finish, using a burnished single edge razor blade. This gives a continuous rounded edge, with a seamless transition in the curve from wood to finish. Having said that, fret installation after finish does have some benefits.

Andy

I had to repair a couple chips similar to those that happened when filing the fret ends flush on the first guitar I was building on my own. The finish was waterborne lacquer. I feathered the finish on the edges of the chipouts by sanding lightly, and then applied layers of finish to where it was missing (overlapping a bit onto the surrounding finish) with a water color brush until it was built up slightly higher than the surrounding finish. Then level sanded and sanded through higher grits and polished. In that case, the new finish blended fine with the existing finish so the repairs were invisible.

Woodie's tip about beveling the fretboard edge before installing the frets to prevent chipping is a good one.





I think it's fair to say that it's common practice to install the frets after finishing the neck, at least for steel string guitars and for those who install the frets after attaching the neck permanently to the body.

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