Gibson 335 Refret - photo journal of the levels of prep that goes into the job

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Se a customer who I have known for a long time, and who used to work as a guitar fixer at a store here in Croydon sent his Memphis built Gibson 335 to us for a refret .

He asked us to take photos, so I thought I'd share some pics Tom and I took along the way. 

We captured more pics of the preparation and groundwork this time round as we have already shown stages of the actual fretting stages in other photo stories, but it is good to se how much work goes into the process and why such a job can run to 5-6 hours of solid time at the bench.

We had a LOT of refrets in recently so a few pics may show fretwire being cut for multiple jobs.

Anyway - here we go:

Starting off wth some coiled fretwire (this one is Dunlop 6000 that we had to cut for an ESP Horizon the same week). We used Dunlop 6100 for this job.


First we have to clean the wire to remove any of the oil from the manufacturing and which is also there to inhibit tarnishing. 

The oil needs to be removed to allow the glue to help hold the fret in the slot.

We use Naptha (like lighter fluid/petrol)


I like to bulk prepare my frets as I find it less time consuming and easier.

I made a set of 3 cutting jigs  for the main sections of the board by fret length

1-6, 7-12, and 13+

It is very slightly wasteful as we cut enough wire to allow a little hanging over even for the longest of the frets in that batch, but the saving in time at a relatively high hourly rate is more worthwhile.


Here is Steve's wire all cut to the 3 lengths , but as yet unprepared for installation .

Here we have the other batches of wire that I prepared that morning 

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So lets start preparing the guitar for the refret

First we want to remove the old frets 

We apply heat via a large chisel tip soldering iron, to break any glue bond on the old frets.

Here is Tom doing that process. 

We use a little solder to help transfer that heat quickly & more effectively to the wire to prevent having it transfer too much heat to the wood.

The small cutters get under the head of the fret and lets us walk the wire out from one side across to the other . Repeat 22 times.

With all the frets out we have to level and prepare the board .

We will always try to optimise the board before attempting to install new frets were we can - easier on rosewood and Ebony boards, but not so on lacquered maple boards (unless we are getting to strip the lacquer and refinish the board)

Here you see the criss cross pattern of chinagraph pencil so we can see areas of the board that the leveller hasn't touched .

Obviously we will have the neck arrow straight and supported to do this process.

We will often add a little fallaway to the last section of the board - seriously not much but enough to allow a little clear air for the string to vibrate in especially when playing up around the 9th - 15th fret area

Fret slots are cleaned out and checked for depth  with a small saw, and a special hooked scraper and the use of a specially chosen tapered cutter in a dremel. We widen the very top of the slot very slightly to allow the barbs on the tang to start their pathway in.

I made a clear baseplate for our Dremel's Stewmac precision router base so we can see the workpiece more easily

and eventually the guitar is ready to receive frets , although the frets still have a lot of preparation before we can install them 

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Fretwire prep time - this is way more time consuming than people realise

First we nip the tangs where the fret needs it to allow a fit inside the binding . We also do this on guitars that don't have bindings but just inside the very end of the the slot in the fingerboard so you don't risk having tang sticking out the side of the neck to have to be hard filed back (which can risk damaging the finish of the neck ) or stick out if the neck were to shrink very slightly over time - we do fill in the gaps at the end though and make them as invisible as possible 



Tang nipping tools are so useful, and generally they do a great job, but they always leave a trace of the tang that you still need to file away .

If you don't then the head of the fret would not sit flush over the binding , and on guitars that didn't have any binding you would see a tiny nub of tang which isn't the look we want either



We tend to usually cut the wire with a tiny bit  on the other side of the nipper which helps stop the cutter from twisting  and deforming the tang as it pushes through.
You can see a little of the remaining tang in the gap where the nipper has done a pretty good job on it's own. 


Another view of that. It doesn't look like much but we still need to remove it .


To start lets remove the leftover bit 


Snip and it's gone

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Now comes the "fun" bit.....filing that tang flush x 44 times



A sharp needle file is your friend and you start to appreciate the better cut that a Swiss made file has over the generic Chinese made ones .

We have them in a couple of different cuts - think we mainly use a #2 cut and a #4 smooth mill cut in the Swiss made Grobet/Vallorbe files.

These are the same type of Swiss three corner files we doctor with smoothed edges to make our fret end smoothing files from.

The one you see here is un-doctored though

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So - where were we? - oh yes right here (but with frets all ready to go)

This next section is not as detailed as these processes deserve , but we have done other shoots of the stages involved so do have a look at those articles too https://felineguitars.com/pages/spotlight-on

So frets are pushed it with some medium viscosity superglue in the slot 

Once all installed the ends are nipped with cutters  and then need to be filed flush wit a slight bevel inwards. we have quite a number of these bevel files . 

The one shown here was one that Tom made to hold a particular micro-planing file that Stewmac sell that is very effective at cutting.





Next up would be rounding and smoothing the ends of those frets in a manner that we learnt from The Santa Cruz Guitar company , where we leave a triangular facet at the fret end with nicely rounded corners blending into the sides of the frets.

We didn't get a shot of that but here is what it looks like on one of our own guitars

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Using a notched straight edge to get the neck straight.

Shown here on the bench, but we will do the same thing in the neck jig too with the guitar strung to allow us to see the effects of string tension on the neck.

For the fret dressing process have a look at this article 

https://felineguitars.com/pages/Anatomy-of-a-Fret-Dress

Here is the 335 in the neck jig after having the frets levelled and the crowning has been done too 

Restrung and getting a set-up and a new Earvana nut 

The job came out really well and the guitar is one of the nicest 335s I've played in a long time - and now it has lovely new frets too .

danishbacon

Very cool, thanks for sharing this!

BillDL

A beautiful job and an article like this lets us all have a good insight into the skills and tools needed for a perfect job.  I especially like your tip about leaving some of the fret and tang on the other side of the area of the tang you are nipping out.  I don't have tang nippers but I have borrowed one a few times and I always ended up with a deformed tang that needed straightening at the end because I was snipping it off right at the end of the fret.

Teyeplayer

Incredible focus on the small details and a neat job. I’ve seen too many refrets that look like they’ve been done by my kids -unsightly gaps and a bodged finish. What I like about this, is that I’m not sure I could tell this was a refret. 

drofluf

Thanks for sharing. How long does the whole process take? I know it’s a piece of string question but assuming no major issues..

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drofluf said:

Thanks for sharing. How long does the whole process take? I know it’s a piece of string question but assuming no major issues..

Usually 5-6 hours (and about an hour longer if using stainless since it is harder to work )

drofluf

Thanks!