iLuthier

Some problem frets getting you down?

Often when you’re pulling frets out from an ebony or rosewood finger board they tend to chip and break the wood as they come out, resulting in more work gluing and filling the boards before the refret. As you know, time is money!

Instead, try using a hot soldering iron to remove problem frets. Place the tip of the iron on the fret to help loosen it and then remove the fret – chip free – with your pliers.

The heat expands the fret tang and shrinks the wood around it slightly, allowing for easier removal. Make sure you have a damp rag at hand jut in case you need to cool things down quickly.

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Fret dressing. You either love it or you hate it, but with the right tools you can fly through it in no time flat.

While some people like to have an all-purpose file for initial fret dressing I prefer to have a couple of single purpose ones – one for dressing the edges of the frets at 90 degrees and the other for beveling. I just find it easier, personally, to use two separate tools rather than one. The tools are slightly lighter than a combined one and I find they’re more comfortable in the hand and easier to use. Sure, you also have to use two separate files instead of one, but files are pretty cheap and they last twice as long than if you used the one file in your dressing tool.

The 90 degree fret file is easy enough to make – as are most of the tools we’ll feature here, actually. Basically you just need to fix a file at right angles to a block of wood. To do this I use a simple back “fence” so that the file will stay in line, then I just screw another smaller piece of wood to the fence which bears down on the surface of the file (see pic), clamping it down tightly. You don’t really need a lot of pressure but you do need to make sure that the file doesn’t move. If you find that it does move then all you need to do is screw another one, or perhaps two more, bits of wood to the fence.

I should add that it’s probably safer if you cut the tang of your file off and smooth everything over with an angle grinder. I haven’t done that with the file used in these pictures but I should. Having said that though I’ve not had an accident involving file tangs ever. Still, there’s always a first time!

It’s also important to make sure that you position the back fence so that the edge of the file overhangs the edge of your wood block – but not too much as it may mar the surface of the body or the the headstock as you dress your frets. About a 3/16″ to 1/4″ overhang is probably enough.

Similarly the bevel dressing tool is made in much the same way, with the exception being that you need to cut and plane one edge at around 35 degrees to get your angle. You can do this by hand or, if you’re fortunate enough to have one, on a saw bench with a tilting arbor. Once you’ve done that you make your back fence and hold-down pieces in the same manner.

LEFT: Dual purpose fret dressing tool made by Brian Calvert of the ever fabulous “Project Guitar” website, which you can find in our featured links section. This one has been made by cutting the block to shape, then cutting a groove in middle, where the two surfaces meet, and hammering a file into the slot.

To finish off you can glue some soft leather or felt cloth to the surface of your fret dressing tools where the tool rides across the top of the frets. I personally don’t bother though as any “wear” or scratching of the frets is virtually non existent. Not enough for me to worry about anyway. What I do use though is a piece of softer wood – usually mahogany – glued to the underside of the wood block.

So there you have it! A fret dressing tool – or tools – for a few dollars or so!

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Squirt some super glue into your fret slots, wait for it to dry, and then carefully recut the slots so that fret tangs will have a harder and more stable surface to “grab” and bite into. This is really only necessary if you’re having trouble with the frets not grabbing properly in the first place though so most times you can do without.

Also, on the subject of super glue, it can often be quite messy – resulting in fingers being covered in the stuff. If you don’t have any remover then use some sandpaper or a pumice stone and remove the glue that way. Be warned though that you only have seven layers of skin so it can become rather tender there towards the end. Also make sure that your glued-up hands are nowhere near your face or eyes as the vapors from super glue is enough to cause much discomfort.

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NOTE: Click on the photographs for a larger image.

A number of years ago now I decided to make a small wooden “utility” vice that I could use while filing and shaping some of the small parts needed in instrument making. I also thought that if I could utilize different “jaw blocks” I might be able to do a wide range of jobs such as trimming pegs and dowels, holding irregular shaped items and – what I use this vice mostly for – shaping and roughing out nuts and saddles.

The first thing I needed to do is work our what wood to make the vice from. It needed to be tough and hard wearing, with little or no compression – well, not enough to affect the workability of the vice anyhow. I also wanted it to look cool. After all if you can’t make a tool that’s pleasing to the eye as well as functional then you might as well just buy it off the shelf if possible.

LEFT: The wooden parts ready for final assembly.

I found some colorful Honduras rosewood (Dalbergia stevensonii) that I had leftover from another project so I decided to use that. The wood looks great and it’s quite hard wearing so I figured it would work fine for the job. Though this wood can be a pig to glue sometimes and is therefore relegated – for the most part – to making percussion instruments I felt that most of the assembly would be pegged or screwed anyway so gluing wasn’t really an issue at all.

I then set out a simple plan drawing of what I wanted and machined the wood up into blanks for the parts.

LEFT: Showing the stopped rebate (on the rails) for the brass “stay-bar” on the sliding jaw and the rebate for the captured nut in the “anchor” block.

I figured I would need 2 rails, two end pieces – one acting as one of the vice jaws and the other as an “anchor” block to hold the captured nut for the screw handle – and a sliding piece to act as the other half of the vice jaw. I also cut a third “rail” which I later planed to a hexagon shape to act as a handle for the screw. As both the jaws and the anchor block are profiled in the same way there’s really only 2 different shapes to make in this project – rails and blocks.

LEFT: Another view of the anchor block (right) and the slot in the sliding block (left) to house the “stay” for the screw end.

I decided to make my rails 3/4″ wide by 3/4″ high by 8″ long but they can be any size you want really. 3/4″ x 3/4″ x 8″ just seemed like a good size to me. The block pieces are made from 2-1/2″ wide and 1-1/2″ high blanks. The lower 3/4″ square is removed from each side so that the side rails fit snugly in. This can be done with either a hand saw or a bandsaw if you have one. Once the waste is removed from each of the three blocks they can be filed and sanded smooth, then the parts “dry assembled” to see if everything is working right. I should also add that the wood for the handle is 3/4″ x 3/4″ x 4″ long so make sure to calculate that in to the overall length of your screw thread.

LEFT: The screw parts (left) including the captured nut that has been ground down on one side to fit.

Now comes the drilling and chiseling. This is where the rosewood is a little hard on your cutting edges so take care to make sure you keep them as sharp as possible. If they’re not sharp you have to put more muscle into your work and if you put more muscle into it then it’s easier to slip and have an accident. In short keep those chisel edges sharp.

LEFT: A close up of the screw parts. The handle has been drilled out to fit the all-thread and epoxied in. It also has had a hole drilled through the wood and the steel screw and a 1/4″ brass rod added for extra strength. Note the groove at the end of the all-thread where the retainer bar locks into.

Clamp two of your blocks together if possible. One will be your anchor block and the other will be your sliding block. If you find it hard to clamp them the try gluing them together – face-to-face – with a bit of super glue. It’s only temporary so don’t worry about strength so much. It just has to hold together long enough to drill a hole through both of them while they’re together. Make a mark about 9/16″ from the top and in the center and then use a drill bit the same size, or slightly smaller, than your all-thread. Once this is done check to make sure it’s a nice tight fit without any sloppiness. Separate your blocks and concentrate on the anchor block.

LEFT: The thread is then fed into the sliding jaw and locked in with a flat brass retainer bar which has been hammered in through the slot at the bottom of the block. This slot can be filled in afterwards with epoxy if desired.

The first part of the anchor block can be hand or bandsawed away. After all the bottom 3/4″ will butt up against the inside walls of the side rails so it’ll look nice and clean anyway. It’s only the last part – where the nut actually sits – that will need drilling and mortising. Try not to make the fit too loose but remember that you can always shim it or epoxy it in tight afterwards to make sure the nut won’t spin around.

LEFT: Another view of the partly assembled vice.

Now move on to the sliding jaw. Cut, plane or sand about 1/16″ to 1/8″ from the bottom so that you can screw a brass “stay-bar” to the underside of the block. The bar (which unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of) overhangs each side of the block and “rides” in stopped rebates that are cut into the underside of each rail (see second picture from the top). This helps to make sure that the sliding jaw doesn’t wrack or lift off the rails and that it slides along the rails fairly evenly.

Some smaller holes are drilled into the bottom deep enough so that the brass retainer can fit into the groove that you will file on the end of your screw thread. This will make it so that once the thread is screwed into the sliding jaw block and the retainer hammered in the screw can not unscrew out of the block again.. The holes are then slotted and cleaned up with a very small 1/8″ or 1/16″ wide chisel if you have one. If you don’t have one then you might be able to sharpen the end of a small flat jewelers screwdriver if it’s of reasonable quality to hold an edge. I’ve made many chisels from these things and they work wonderfully for inlays and other small jobs. You can also use a Dremel tool to do this if you have one handy.

LEFT: The finished vice with removable mahogany “nut jaws”. The jewelers hand vice on the left is also useful for holding nuts and other small parts.

Now dry assemble everything again to see if there’s any changes that need to be made. There’s no need to hammer in the retaining bar until you know that everything is working OK. Only when you’re sure that things are fine you can now screw, dowel, pin or glue the parts together. If you’re really going to be cranking the vice up tight I would do a combination – either screw and glue or pin and glue. In my vice the glue was just an extra precaution and I wouldn’t want to rely solely on it when using Honduras rosewood. If you’re only going to do light work (as I do with my vice) and you’re using another wood then either glue, pins, or screws will do.

LEFT: An end view of the vice with a nut in the nut jaws. Having the jaws angled and proud of the rest of the vice allows for easier shaping from a larger choice of hand positions.

Clean up all the surfaces and smooth off all the edges. Apply some varnish or a sealer coat and you’re done! I’ve made a couple of sets of “secondary jaws” out of mahogany that I screw to the jaws and use for various specialty jobs but they’re not really needed otherwise. Because the vise is for small work I don’t bother about screwing or clamping it down to my workbench. I just hold the vise with one hand and file, cut, shape and sand with the other.

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Having seen those cool looking “can opener” type fret benders and realizing their usefulness due to the fact that the radius of the frets can be easily changed with a simple hex wrench, I decided some time back to scrounge around my workshop and see if I could knock together a fret bender of my own for little or no cost.

I didn’t want to spend much money on parts and, as it turned out, I didn’t have to actually buy anything for this tool. Everything needed was lying around in piles of broken appliances, car parts, drawers and amongst other junk. I was fortunate enough to find a couple of old greasy bearings which happened to have an oil groove machined on the face of each one. I figured this groove – which was a semi-circular profile rather than a v-groove as it turned out – would be perfect for guiding the fret wire through as I radiused it. Now all I needed was a top wheel, a backing plate to mount them on, a few nuts and bolts and a handle of some sort to use as a crank.

I decided to make my own “center wheel” from a plywood disc cut with a router on a trammel jig – which in my case was basically just a piece of plastic with a thick nail in it and a hole to allow the router bit through. This worked out well and I was able to do the job quickly and easily. Also, because I had a center hole drilled in my disc as my pivot point, I was able to use that for the mounting hole for the bolt. I should add that I had to temporarily mount the disc on the bolt and chuck it in the drill press so that I could – carefully and on a very slow speed – cut a groove for the fret tang so that the tang would not be crushed as you fed the wire through. I used a block of wood set at the right height and a stiff-backed tenon saw resting on it to to this. Be CAREFUL though! Make sure you go slowly, lightly and with the direction of the disc and not against the rotation in case the saw blade “bites’ and the momentum throws the saw back at you.

I could’ve just used another piece or two of plywood for the backing board and stand but I happened to find a half box shaped piece of steel instead. I have no idea what this piece was originally supposed to be for but I decided to use it anyway and it worked excellently for my purposes. As it turned out it also already had a few holes drilled in it that I thought would be fairly convenient and might save me a little time if they happened to be in the right places. Fortunately they were so I didn’t have to do any drilling at all initially. Because I wanted the tool to be versatile and be able to give me a range of radiuses though I decided to make the holes for the metal roller bearings slightly oversized. That way I could position each roller how I wanted it.

LEFT: View from the back.

The last thing I needed to do was to make the crank. All this took was a scrap of mild steel flat bar about half an inch wide, a few nuts and another bolt. The reason I used a few nuts is that the bolt I found to secure the plywood disk to the backing board and the crank just happened to be a bit too long so, rather than cut it down, I used a larger nut or two as a spacer. I cut the bar to length, put a couple of bends in it (which you can see in the bottom pic) and rounded over the edges so that they wouldn’t dig into my hand as I used the crank. Once that was done the fret bender was finished!

This tool is a very low-tech affair but it works surprisingly well and has served me faithfully over the past 15 years. Best of all it was completely free!

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