maple neck - fret dressing for finish?

[doghouseman]

Do you guys fret dress maple necks? I know they come from warmoth with the finish on the frets.  I am getting a satin finished maple neck.  How much trouble is this to get off?

 

[Cagey]

I do. It's not tough. Some guys just let it wear off through use, but I can't. It looks too nasty after I've done the rest of the fretwork. Plus, it doesn't feel good.

If the neck is new, the easiest way I've found is to just get a fresh single-sided razor blade, and shave it all off. Don't scrape; you'll scratch up the frets and create more work for yourself.

Hold the blade at a low angle on one side of the fret and pull it to the other. It'll only take off a sliver, but that's enough. Do that again on the top of the fret, then the other side. That generally gets about 98% of the finish off. Then, some sanding with progressively finer papers perpendicular to the neck to clean them up for polishing.

And when I say a "fresh" blade, I don't mean one you've never used for fretwork. I mean one that's never been used. If it's not factory sharp, all you're going to get is a fight from the whole process and you'll wonder about my sanity.

Also, it's a good idea to tape off the neck, or you're liable to nick/scuff up the fretboard. That never looks good at first, and looks horrible shortly thereafter.

Finally, you're going to end up with a bunch of ~2" long strips of very narrow, thin finish laying around that will defy cleanup. Little buggers will make styrofoam peanuts look cooperative. Get the vacuum cleaner out before you even start; it's about the only way to get those little bits up.

 

[doghouseman]

THanks Cagey for the information.

Have you ever done a satin neck before? I can't imagine there would be a lot of finish to remove, as compared to a gloss finish.

I am really not looking forward to doing this but it sounds easy enough.

 

[Cagey]

Yes, I've done satin necks. It's no different. There's the same amount of finish, it just doesn't look like it from the surface.  In fact, Warmoth's satin finishes look so natural that they put a red dot on the heel so they can tell the difference between finished/unfinished necks.

Don't sweat it. It really is easy. It's just time-consuming. If you'd rather not mess with it, you may want to consider sending the neck to someone for a setup. I'm sure it'll include cleaning the frets. I know I do. No choice, really. Plus, you'll end up with a neck that'll make you wonder why you never spent that money before.

 

[stubhead]

If you'd rather not mess with it, you may want to consider sending the neck to someone for a setup. I'm sure it'll include cleaning the frets. I know I do. No choice, really. Plus, you'll end up with a neck that'll make you wonder why you never spent that money before.

HOLY COW! i BET IT'S REALLY HARD TO FIND ANYBODY THAT CAN DO THAT! :glasses10:

I would recommend that you stay away from any of the really half-assed "internet-tutorial" solutions people come up with, and also stay away from some of the more nuclear-bomb type WE'RE GONNA BLAST THOSE FRETS TO... FREEDOM! kinda thing.

In the first case, anything you see that claims you can do all your fret improvement by just going up and down the neck can range from just silly to downright destructive - you have to go side-to-side, each individual fret, or you're wasting way too much metal. Some of these tutorials are scary, because they're written so well, with pretty yellow borders and chummy-yet-authoritative style, bulleted points and all, and THEY'RE DEAD WRONG.

One thing that a lot of people use, that works quite well, is steel wool, 0000 size. I prefer the plastic non-woven fiber "steel wool" for most finishing things, but for a few reasons it doesn't work nearly as well on frets as the old-fashioned, real metal stuff. And those little bitty wirey shreds love to travel EVERYWHERE, they like your clothes, they LOVE pickup magnets, people doing lots of metal steel wooling even get the shreds under their fingernail. A damp old t-shirt to wipe your hands on is a help, you always just automatically have a roll of paper towels... there are some processes by some people where they still uses steel steel wool for finishing, and they will often have a big mofo MAGNET for shred patrol.

What Cagey said about protecting the fingerboard goes extra-super-double-whammied with steel wool. You can't really brush the shreds off without scratching, they need to be shaken, blown or sucked off.* But of course you always have your shop vac right there, plugged in, anyway? Of course we do! There are some things called "fret protectors” which are actually very cool, they're a little rectangle of .020” stainless steel sheet with a slot in them for the fret. Which I can't figure out, it's always too wide or too narrow or trying to hold it steady like that has semi-comedic aspects... But what you can do is hold the outer edge up tight to the fret, in such a way that the wood, on that single side of the fret, can't get scratched. Oh, the shrapnel though. Stewie Mac has had them for years, but they're now all over Ebay & internet places.
http://guitarsandwoods.com/set-fretboard-protectors.

But I made a little handle for mine, and I can use that for dressing fret ends - if you jam it up against the fret corner (yes, all 88. Or 96 ) and let your corner shaping device ride on it, you just CAN'T scratch the fretboard. Foolproof! We like foolproof.



Because I use abrasive papers to do my frets anyway, I have massive amounts of transfer credits vis-a-vis the OCD shrapnel patrol. Which segues seamlessly into the next harangue - SEEING little tiny shit. I'm 56 and my eyes seem to be repaying me for a half-century of... looking at stuff? Regardless, I need my Optivisor and my 10X jewelers loupe and cheap WallyWorld “reading” glasses and GOOD, STRONG, LIGHT of some source or another. I think this is seriously underestimated as a primary source of sloppy work.*#*  In fact, I don't think perfect 20/20 vision is actually good enough to lift work up past the “Well it doesn't really suck as bad as it used to.”

Re: the Nuclear Option, more beautiful “tutorials” will tell you to use a rubber disc with a slot in it in a Dremel mototool. They even Ebay discs with slots for this. And it is another way to do a really good job. But unless you have serious transfer credits with a Dremel, this is not the piece you want to start practicing on.


*(No. Just, "NO".)

*#*( Number 2 main cause: If you're getting mad at it, frustrated over something, PUT IT DOWN, WALK AWAY. Go play your other guitar, walk the dog, get chummy with the wife; or get chummy with the dog, walk your other guitar, pla... well you get the picture.)