Fret ends and how to smooth them?

  • Thread starter Thread starter SpiderWars
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SpiderWars

SpiderWars

Well-known member
I have a few guitars with fret ends that are not bothersome at all but you can still feel them if you try. What is the best way to get them totally smooth? One neck is Maple board and one is Rosewood. Do you have to do each one with a special file or can you sort of plane that whole edge? I like the finish and edge of the wood and don't want to disturb that. I ordered the Stewmac fret end file and some micromesh pads.
 
Pretty simple. Just run a file lengthwise down the edge of the entire fretboard. It should only take a few passes.
 
As you've realized, there's a lot of detailed work involved in getting the frets perfectly uniform without doing any unrepairable damage. There is only one easy way to do the work. I'm sure you make your money easily doing your job, fret work is a job for someone who does it for a living and considers it just another day at the office.
 
You need to tape off the entire neck with a good masking tape between every fret prior to you filing down the fret ends with either a small or the big Stemac fret file.
 
Markedman said:
As you've realized, there's a lot of detailed work involved in getting the frets perfectly uniform without doing any unrepairable damage. There is only one easy way to do the work. I'm sure you make your money easily doing your job, fret work is a job for someone who does it for a living and considers it just another day at the office.
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I'll do that for special guitars but these are partscasters. This was the first one where I actually leveled-recrowned-polished the frets myself and it plays wonderfully and rings true everywhere. But I ordered the neck with no edge rolling and didn't have the end file. So it needs work there anyway and I noticed a tiny bit of a bump for each fret end and want to address it myself. It has probably dried out a little since I bought it to expose the fret ends a little more.
 
harddriver said:
You need to tape off the entire neck with a good masking tape between every fret prior to you filing down the fret ends with either a small or the big Stemac fret file.
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You mean like make a little V on the side to only expose the tang?
 
SpiderWars said:
You mean like make a little V on the side to only expose the tang?
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You tape off any exposed wood ligaments top and bottom between the frets. You are trying to protect the top and bottom edges of the wood of the neck from getting too scratched up once the fret ends get sanded down to the point where the file starts to make contact with the neck wood.
 
I got a little file called the Fret Guru off Amazon and corrected mine... winter in MN...
 
I had already watched that Erlewine video when I made the thread. Dan is the first I seek for stuff like this. :thumbsup:
 
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