Official Luthiers Forum!

My current instruments are using a piece of 1/16" music wire as the saddle in the bridge. It works pretty o.k. except for the thinner strings which have a lower tension at the ends of the bridge - kind of like a loose saddle on a guitar.

With my CNC machine, I can make a fret slot that follows the curve of my bridge and what I'd like to try and do is to use fretwire for my saddle. I have an arbor press I can use to press it into the slot. I think that would make a much better connection with the bridge than the wire in a slot would.

You can see from the the straight on shot that theres a curve with maybe a 3 or 4" radius toward the treble end of the bridge. Before I go out and buy $50 of fret wire, do you guys think that I will need to pre bend the fretwire to that tight radus, or do you suppose that I'll be able to sort of "bend as I go" as you would with purfling or something like that?

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I bent standard nickel fretwire from LMI without even trying Shouldn't be too much of a hassle, just be real gentle with it and coax it with pliers along the way. If that doesn't work......sorry

A good idea, round the edges of the channel just a bit to prevent splitting if you need to take the wire out.

I concur with Ian. But think the EVO or Stainless would be a tougher job. Not sure what type of fret wire you use but think a few bucks worth would do the job.
Tom

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Some of the narrow fret wires bend more easily in the direction you need than they do in the other plane. Look at Stew Mac #0764, or Jescar #s FW37053 & FW39040S. I'm not sure that fret wire is what you need. Would piano-style alternate pins work? How about solid strip? (McMaster part # 8954K21).

Thanks for the thoughts. Especially on the point of the narrower frets being easier to bend in that plane.

As to the alternating pin thing - yes, I've seen banduras with that setup and it stinks: The pins are necessarily too small and end up moving over time as they cut into the wood. There's also not to much room on the bridge for those. Short answer is a big fat "no way" on the alternating pins.

Solid strip is an option and I've even procured a few strips of bar fret material. I'm not so keen on brass as I've used brass wire before and upon replacing the brass with spring steel (hobby store music wire) I got a nicer sound that was a little brighter (or at least, so it seems). I realize that fretwire is a step backward in the hardness arena but it's got to be harder than brass.

The thing that's appealing about the fretwire is the tang holding it against the bridge. The steel wire works o.k. but there's always a few strings that are a little deader or have a little buzz due to the channel for the wire not being perfect or the bend in the wire not being perfect.

That said, I can now try cutting the wire channel with the CNC machine rather than by hand which may solve the problem too.

oh yea, and the $50 is just because I hate paying shipping costs - if I buy a few feet from stew mac for a test, I'll have to buy a few more for an instruments blah blah blah....if it looks like it will work, I may as well buy a pound of wire from the get go to save cash in the long run.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Even pretty wide fretwire will bend easily in that plane on the bigger radius--if the tight radius turns out to be a problem, it might be worth building a jig to bend the tight radius first, then hand form it to the big radius. The jig could look like any of the standard "tubing benders" that are out there for bending big stuff, but with a groove in it big enough to accommodate the bead of the fret wire, allowing the tang to remain perpendicular to the arc. Narrow fretwire shouldn't be any problem, but I would bet that given your experience with brass vs. spring steel tone that wider fretwire might give you more of what you're looking for. On banjos at least, there's a pretty significant difference in tone when using bigger or smaller fretwire...

Dave

ps--beautiful bandurras!

Thanks Dave, Now that my machine is up and running I can get back to building them!!!

One more question for those still paying attention. When I used my arbor press to install frets in a fret board, I used one of those clamping cauls from stewmac to do it. Obviously, it would be rather ridiculous to make a gigantic caul for this purpose so I was just planning on pressing it in as I go, kind of like hammering frets. Anybody see any reasons why that shouldn't work?

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com