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Hi All,

These are pictures of my Brother-In-Law's 70's era Washburn Martin knock-off. His fret board is pretty worn with divots down on the first 5 frets. I was wondering the best way to go about repairing this for him.

I thought I could just remove the whole thing and put a new fret board on. Also, I thought about removing just the fret board below the fifth fret only, and gluing on and reslotting the new piece once on, or I could re-slot before I glued back on but was wondering how this would work at the 5th fret joint. Finally, I have one of John Halls DVD's where he repairs an older Martin with a similar condition by just routing out the divots, and inlaying a piece of ebony in those areas. So what do you think?

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."

Does it need a refret?

I'm asking because in the process of a refret the board would be leveled removing most of the divots and then scraped once refretted removing even more of the divots all in the normal course of a proper refret.

The divots don't look too excessive to me and we typically will leave some of them, the last tell tales because it's part of the history of the instrument and they won't hurt anything either.

If anyone wants them totally gone on Frank's Frets.net site he has a couple of ways to approach the divots.

Thanks Hesh, yes it needs a refret which I was planning on doing. I would be fine in leaving some of the divots, I don't think he'll mind as long as it's playable again. So, you suggest I take out the frets, level the board, refret, then "scrape". I am not quite clear on why I would need to scrape if I am leveling prior to fretting, shouldn't I just get the board where I want it and then fret, then do the fret leveling and dressing. BTW should I level and then radius the board, or just use the radius beam all the way until the divots are acceptable. Finally, you can see it is bound, should I level with the binding on or take it off and scape it after I have the board sanded?

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."

Hi Kurt - My approach would be to simply refret the guitar and here are some of the steps that I would take to accomplish the refret.

First the binding can stay and it's very possible that you may have some loose binding already too. If that's the case pull the frets and I say pull but what I mean is use the nippers and the angled jaws to gently lift the old frets being careful to not chip the edges of the fret slots in the process.

Next I would level the board and I use a 1" X 2" leveling beam not a radiused beam and you can make your own leveling it on a surface plate or our friend OLFer Murray sells these beams ready to go.

In the leveling process check out the neck angle too. This beast may need a neck reset or perhaps is getting to that point. You can creatively level favoring material removal in the nut area and actually belay the need for a reset at times if the instrument is not in need of a reset yet.

Lots of guitars of this vintage had excessive roll-over near the edges of the fret board. If this is the case a 1" leveling beam will be your friend and a fixed radius sanding caul will require way too much material removal to kiss the edges to be useful or advised.

Be sure to level in fall-away after the 12th fret too. Just .010" from the 12th to the last is your friend and important too for low action should that be a requirement when all is said and done.

By the way when leveling with a leveling beam tracing the string paths with your strokes will inadvertently result in a compound radius also a desirable thing.

Then clean out the slots, check the depth for clearance, and refret as usual. If you subscribe to a very slight bevel on the fret slot edges now, before installing the new frets is the time to do it.

Now to be more clear and sorry this did not make sense in my first post. Simply by leveling the board you will remove most of the divots. After my new frets are in place and glued I use a single edge razor and scrape the board between the frets to remove traces of glue, freshen up the bindings from the scratches left from the abrasive on the beam, and most of the remaining divots are removed as well all in the scraping process. You can sand too after scraping if you get any chatter using the single edge razor blade.

So it's really no different than working on a new instrument with the only difference being that you can be more aggressive in the leveling and scraping in pursuit of the divots. Again though we often leave them, the divots as I will today with the 63 Epiphone that I am currently refretting.

Hope this helps.

PS: Make a shield to protect the body should you slip with the leveling beam, etc.

Thanks again Hesh, makes sense and I understand. I will look over the current neck angle closely, in fact once I get the frets off I will use a long straight edge and see where it ends up on the bridge end. It should be just a little over the bridge with the saddle removed correct? I do have a machined 1" leveling beam that I got from Fret Guru and I will use that. So following the strings and ending up with a compound radius I don't even need to touch it afterwards with the radius sanding beam. And, after it is fretted, I use the same beam with finer paper to do the initial fret level I take it as well. What glue would you recommend for the frets, I have some fish glue I thought might be good. I have done cyano on my couple of new builds in a class I took with Frank Finnochio by dripping the thin stuff on the ends and letting it run down when the guitar was propped on it's side. But that is before there's any finish on the guitar, not sure if the cyano would be a problem with the laquer if it runs through and hits it.

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."

That boy should have cut his finger nails once in a while.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Yes that and learn some bar chords too.

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."

Looks like my old Yamaha acoustic fretboard. Well broke in.

Yeah using the 1" radius leveling beam and tracing the string paths will result in that compound radius without even giving it any thought. Kind of nice when things work out how we wish, eh...

For me, and lots of folks have their own spec/method, I like to see the straight edge come in just skimming the top of the bridge when there are no frets on the board. When fretted the straight edge comes in the height of the frets over the bridge. This produces a slightly overset neck angle that I use in my work and builds. Others may and do use slightly different angles.

This guitar is likely to be in need at some point of a reset so don't be surprised if the straight edge comes in below the top of the bridge.

We use water thin, fresh CA for frets mostly because we don't have time to wait for other glues to set-up when we also clamp every fret in place as the glue dries. We press our frets and can press frets in any location on the neck with some of the creative jigs that Dave Collins has created.

To glue we run a bead of water thin CA next to the fret (taking care to not let it roll onto the finish or neck...) and we want to see that bead create wetness on the other side of the fret as it wicks into the slot, around the tang, and up the other side of the fret. The fret is immediately clamped firmly in place with a Stew-Mac Jaws II tool and appropriate fret radius caul. Once the fret is clamped we hit the thing with accelerator, wait a few seconds and then move on to the next fret. You can work in a manner that does not let the accelerator contaminate the next fret in line to be glued. Also, very shortly after applying that bead of thin ca to the pressed fret we wipe up the excess and if your careful a little acetone can be your friend in getting extra CA off the board. Residual CA is not an issue and gets removed in that scraping phase that I talked about earlier.

But there are lots of ways to work, refret, glue in frets etc. This is just how we are currently doing it and a proven method that works very well, is efficient time wise, and produces results where everyone is happy.

Oh yeah for the grit of abrasive on the beam we use 80 for board leveling, 120 for the initial approach to fret leveling, milling in relief, etc., and I switch to 220 for the final level before crowning.

...or at least a capo.

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Under Compensated Nut!

I have used Frank Ford's [Frets.com] method of "filling" fingerboard divots on many RW and EB boards with great success. The advantage is not having to thin the original board or replacing an otherwise fine original BRW board. Teflon fret slot dams are helpful where damage is close to the slots [keeping the CA / Wood dust from filing the slots].
I've had boards as bad or worse than that come out looking perfect… and they have held up over the years.

Go to Frets.com and check out Franks pictorial tutorial.

Mike

I just reworked a BRW fret board on a late 40's J45 using Frank Ford's method for the first time. It worked great. I also used Teflon in the fret slots. I did not bother with the shallow divots but several were monster holes and needed to be fixed.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Hi All,

I finished the Washburn, sanded the fret board, re-fretted, fixed the nut, new saddle and gave it a good polish. Came out great, thanks to everyone's help, special thanks to Hesh.

I ended up doing a video of the whole thing on youtube so my brother in law could check it out. If you're curious here's the link to the first video , there were four when it was all said and done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDlW4IJ ... Rn4HuPgurl

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Kurt Thomas

"There's a first time for everything even if you do it by mistake."