Official Luthiers Forum!

hi,

thanks for accepting me to the forums! my name is shad and i'm rebuilding/restoring a couple of guitars, one of which, i need your help.

i am in the process of defretting a classical guitar and you can see the documented progress on my blog for the project ( http://samuraifretless.blogspot.com ). [hopefully, it's okay to post (topic-related) offsite links. if not, let me know, please.] i have been using dap's plastic wood filler to fill in the fret slots, but the wood paste didn't behave like i wished and i had to apply a second application today, but when i pulled off the masked area, it in turn pulled the overflow wood fill and thus pulled out some of the wood filler. sigh ...

what can/should i do to get the surface flush? the fingerboard is rosewood, so i do not want to seal it.

in research, i initially considered 1mm veneer and even balsa wood for slot-fill, but that's not going to work, b/c i used a fine triangular file and ran it through the fret slots to create a very minimal bevel. this helped beautify and remove some of the scarred fingerboard from the impression left by the fret.

i'm really at a loss of what to do. i'm completely comfortable working on acoustic guitars and though i have some luthier experience, i've never done a project like this one. i also have a wood shop, so i'm not intimidated by tools. however, i don't want to mortgage the house to complete this project. (LoL)

thanks in advance!
shad


p.s. i'm off to update my profile page.

Welcome to the forum Shad.
I would post this in the main forum. You will probably get more replies.
FWIW, I would plane off a couple of mm and glue on a veneer to give the proper string height above the soundboard at the saddle.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

If I understand your problem, I would either use heat (hair dryer or heat gun, but go easy) or solvent (probable naptha) to release the tape. Alternatively, do you need to mask it? Could you fill the slots and just clean it up by resanding the fretboard flat?

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Mike Lindstrom

Colin's idea will work best if you want a smooth surface on top of the fretboard. However, if you want to use a filler of some kind in the slots there are things that should work better than DAP.

1. Use a fine-toothed saw to even out the widths of all the fret slots, maybe something in the 0.028 to 0.032" range or even larger if you like. Kind of depends on what you have available. Glue in slices of the wood of your choice. You could use something that matches or pick a contrasting wood.

2. You can pack the fret slots with wood dust and then wick on some thin CA glue. I usually use 320 sandpaper to make my sanding dust. Note that the wood dust will turn a lot darker with the CA so test some on scrap first to get the look you want.

3. You can also make a slurry of epoxy and wood dust. Pretty much the same as 2, above.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

thanks everyone. i've been reading and re-reading and contemplating the approaches mentioned. what i'm leaning towards right now, is getting that glue resin off the fingerboard and then sanding it again and use the build up wood dust with the CA glue and fill in the blank spots in the fret slots. it will kind of give it a varied 2-tone effect that may look pretty cool ... well, it will either look good or really crappy. lol thoughts?

now, a question about naptha? does it have to be naptha? can i use acetone/nail polish remover? paint thinner? (obviously, i don't know the pro's/con's of particular solvents.)

You're in CA? I think I've read you can't get naptha there. It's easy enough to check. Put some tape on a scrap and see what solvent cleans it up. I'd be nervous about acetone around a finish, but that might be baseless. A little bit of heat works wonders and is less toxic.

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Mike Lindstrom

california is really strict and you're right, mike, i cannot get it here. the other day, when i used heat and friction from just rubbing off the glue residue, it did the trick, but afterwords there was a "grease spot" (for lack of a better word) that remained on the fingerboard. perhaps, my hands were dirty from all of the sanding and the grime and hand oils mixed with the glue. my next option is putting mineral spirits on a rag, letting it evaporate a bit and then wipe off the fingerboard with a bit of elbow grease. what do you think? well, i know it will work, but how will the unsealed rosewood respond to it? will it haze/dull?

i found the following quote from some google link.


thoughts?

p.s. why can't i just use the mineral spirits and even if the fingerboard dulls a bit, could i just VeRy lightly sand the fingerboard to take it down just enough to sand off the dull finish? that sounds logical to me.

thoughts?

hi again,
[to the moderator: if you think this thread will gain more attention in the main forum room, please feel free to move it over there.]

okay, in regards to my previous comment on this thread ...

... and this picture of a guitar top that someone stuck a stick on the top-wood, what would your suggestion(s) be to remove the sticker?



thanks

That's going to depend a lot on the type of finish, and that, in turn, is going to depend on what kind of guitar it is.

If it's a poly finiah(ie:Jap, 1970-80's) paint stripper won't touch it. If it's a french polish, be very careful, etc...

Got a pic of the label? Would help....

okay, according to the documented information (spreadsheet) i have from a conn guitar aficionado on the web, the finish is "Bright Polyester (Polyurethane)".

there is no label inside the sound hole, only a stamp that reads "made in japan".
make/model: C-11 Conn Classical guitar ("Made in Japan")
year: 1974~78
top: spruce (guesstimating it's sitka)
back/sides: mahogany
fingerboard: rosewood

as a week has passed, i'm just bumping up this thread, b/c i'm still [patiently] waiting for an answer.

Try some lemon oil.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

okay, thanks!