Official Luthiers Forum!

I have a newly fretted neck on new build, SM Silver Nickle frets, leveled with 3M 320 grit StikIt, crowned with StewMac 300 Grit Z file, ready for fret polishing. I have a box of different polishing abrasive products and did a test comparison of them. I’ve tried all but Super Assilex (SA) and never did a side-by side comparison. I know everyone has a method that works for them, but I didn’t have one- do now.

The criteria were 1) does it remove ALL scratches and 2) level of effort required. All polishing was done by hand with no other jig, fixture, pad or holder, other than the soft hook and loop foam pad for the SA sheets abrasives.

Super Assilex won, hands down. I had never used the Assilex abrasives, but had a sample pack from Eagle Abrasives- it did the absolute best at removing scratches- almost effortless- I was amazed at how well it worked. Using K-800 then K-1200, finishing with the 4000 Micro Mesh Pad produced perfectly smooth and very shiny frets with a minimum of effort with no additional jigs or holders.

The Micro-Mesh Touch Up Stick, StewMac #3707, did a great job polishing the sides of the frets (both grits). This will be my sequence going forward (Sides with MM Touch Up Stik, then tops with SA K-800, SA K-1200, finishing with MM 4000.

I attached a PDF with comments. I hope this saves some new builders some money and time, YMMV.


Materials Compared:
Hosico Abrasive Eraser Set (worst)
StewMac Belt on spring stick-300 grit (didn't remove all scratches)
Micro Mesh Sanding Pad Kit: SM #3730 Various (coarsest grit did not remove all scratches- but 6000 was great to follow K-1200)
Micro-Mesh Touch Up Stick: SM #3707 (coarsest did not remove all scratches on fret tops but was great on fret sides)
Super Assilex Kovax K-800 Lemon Hook and Loop 3”x 5”Sheet #191-1509 (for the win)
Super Assilex Kovax K-1200 Orange Hook and Loop 3”x 5” Sheet #191-1510 (for the win)

_________________
Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Karl you might like to build yourself one of these a Collins Fret Buffer. We use it nearly every day for almost 20 years now it works great.

After fretting and fret dressing (or just a fret dress) I take use 320 lightly on the frets quad folded and like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle when we were kids. That takes 5 minutes tops maybe.

Then I take the guitar or neck to the buffer pictured and do 4 passes quickly on each side and each of the four wheels. That takes 5 more minutes and then it's done.

The frets leave this buffer with a blinding polish.

It also does stainless all day with no adjustments in our approach or technique.

Dave invented this after doing exhaustive research at the original Gibson plant on Parsons Street in Kalamazoo doing forensics to try to understand what they did. They, Gibson back in the day used wire wheels in a buffer.

They did not have these high-tech 3M abrasive wheels that we use.

The wheels cost about $200 for a set of 4 and we can get 400 - 600 guitars done with a single set of wheels or about 40 cents a guitar to use the system we use. It's much faster and easier than old school polishing though multiple grits one fret at a time. We also think it preserves the level set better as well since the pressure variable is less variable with how you use the buffer.

Some of the folks here have built these and use them too.

Hesh that’s a fantastic setup, It’s no surprise given the volume of instruments your shop sees. So the wheels themselves are abrasive and are not charged? Is the FB-proper polished at the same time or masked off?

_________________
Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Yes these are a 3M product (great company) and the wheels have the abrasive molded in them so you never have to "charge" anything. They do wear out and down and some in the pic are nearly ready to be replaced but we can get about 500 guitars out of them.

And yes the board can be done as is or you can tape it off for say Fender style maple necks. The boards come out silky smooth and then with the final step for us of Howard's Feed-n-wax the frets feel like glass and the board is very smooth, the figure is popped and the wood is darkened for a really nice look.

To give you some idea how much of a polish this puts on the frets. If you have ever used OOOO steel wool on frets the shine ie beyond that. I used to take OOOO steel wool to the frets after the buffer and I stopped doing that because right off the wheels the shine is higher.

When we take an instrument out of the case after one of our fret dresses or refrets and hand it to our clients we often hear the word "wow" because it's a great look and feel.

I collect guitars old and new and I've been known to bring a brand new custom shop Les Paul to work with me to run it through the buffer just to clean up the scratches left from the PLEK process and take the gritty feeling out of the board. The playability improvement is both appreciated and notable.

But most of all it's a 5 minute process to use the buffer, very fast and the only abrasives beyond a wheel set every so often we have to purchase is quality 320.

When I was building I would take micro mesh to my bridges and go though all the grades to get a really nice, high shine. Then I started hitting my bridges on the Collins Fret Buffer and in under one minute I had the same results. Took 1/20th of the time and I didn't need any micro mesh. I still used micro mesh for my custom made BRW bridge pins and would chuck them in a drill and spin them onto the micro mesh pads while watching TV.

Hesh, what the grits of the 4 wheels you use?

I'll have to ask I'm at home and not remembering but I do remember that like micro mesh the grits do not correspond to the grit numbers we are used to using for sand paper. I'll ask tomorrow Dave will know he orders the wheels and invented the tool.

How well do the 1" radial bristle discs work on frets, using a dremel?

You mean metal discs that come with Dremel's? I would think they would scratch the hell out of the frets and in the worse places to get scratches out, the sides.

I'll add that years ago StewMac had several types of abrasive wheels for Dremel's for fret polishing. They take forever to use, more that 20 times longer than the 5 minutes it takes me to go through 4 grits on our fret buffer. They also wear out quickly, aren't cheap so ours got relegated to other purposes such as polishing saddle ramps on tune-e-matic saddles.

When I don't use the fret buffer which I did one last summer at home I just go through various grits of quad folded, quality sandpaper starting with 220, 320, 400, 600 and 800. I follow-up with OOOO steel wool. Some folks will go up to 1500 grit I see that as a waste of time and paper.

When I use the fret buffer I don't use steel wool the buffer has a higher shine than OOOO steel wool so I leave it as is.

No, not wire. The same material that the 6" wheel is made from is also available in a 1" wheel with a 1/8" mandrel.

I wasn't aware that is was available in 1" Dremel wheels, from 3M? Regardless doing one fret at a time is a real slog time wise especially when you have do to each one four times. On a 24 fret instrument that's 96 operations.

With the fret buffer we have 8 operations each one about 30 seconds to do all of the frets.