Newbie pre-cut fret question

greggreg66

I'm sure this has been covered many times in the past, but, I've ordered some pre-cut, pre-bent frets for my explorer build. It's a 12" radius board and allegedly the frets are 12" rad too, but they're much flatter than what my fretboard is. The same happened on my V, but I just hammered them in regardless and a few of them wouldn't sit right at the ends (could also have been a badly sawn slot to very honest). 

The slots on the new fretboard should be tighter. 

Should I carry on and hammer them in, attempt to bend them more, or toss them in the bin buy a fret bender and do my own*?

*I'll do this for the next build

Thanks!

WezV

Ideally the frets should be a little more curved than the board.  You want them to seat at the edges first, then the tangs at the edges push outwards as the middle of the fret comes down to the board.  It locks it all in place.

They are going to be susceptible to popping out at the edges if they start off less curved than the board.

If its stainless wire... it needs to match the radius as close as possible 

greggreg66

tbh I did think that was the way to be doing it. They weren't too expensive, maybe I should just sort myself out with a fret bender and get some wire in as I'm assuming it might be tricky to bent them more now they're pre-cut?

WezV

it is harder ot bend short lengths, but you can make a caul on the desired radius, add a slot, then curve them round it

WezV

like this,


make the slot a bit wider then the fret tangs and it should work with shorter frets

greggreg66

Okay cool man, will give that a blast and see how I get on. Was considering making a slightly tighter radius board with a wider fret slot and see if I can try and bend them into that. If it doesn't work it's not the end of the world. 

Thanks

greggreg66

WezV said:

like this,


make the slot a bit wider then the fret tangs and it should work with shorter frets

Cheers Wez. I replied before I saw this post. Will try that out. Thanks again.