The Fretboard

So the next step for this guitar is to begin the fretboard. Some call it the fingerboard, and usually these two different terms are interchangeable. I continuously call it the fretboard, as it will have frets place in the slots you can see in the picture to the left. For this guitar, I have decided to bind the board, using a piece of Indian rosewood, which will be separated by a piece of white laminate. In the picture to the left, you can see the board, with the bindings, in their raw form. I was lucky to have some extra body bindings that I was able to use for my fretboard.

The first thing that I needed to do was to cut the raw board down to shape. To do this, I needed to precisely measure the width at the nut and the 12th fret. Then, simply, I took a straight edge and drew the line. The one issue with binding the fretboard, is that you have to cut the  fretboard a little bit smaller to accommodate the bindings. For this guitar, I first cut the  fretboard to the exact size that the whole  fretboard would be, and then took the edges down by approximately 1/8th of an inch. To the right, you can see the  fretboard as it was tapered to the correct size.

I began the binding process by taking my pieces of binding, and mitering them so that the joint would look like one continuous piece of wood. This was done with chisels and a bit of sanding. It was one of those "try and see" type of things to make sure that they met perfectly. 

Once, I was satisfied by my work. It was time to glue the whole thing up.  You can see in the picture to the right, and the subsequent picture on the left (below), that there was a bit of wit trim that appeared on the edges of the  fretboard . This will come off with sanding and shaping the fretboard. It was just a product of the white laminate that was on the bindings. After letting the glue tack up for a night, I began the process of adding fret markers on both the face and the edge of the fretboard. To do this, I had to measure the points where the markers were going to be placed and then drill in using the correct drill bit to make sure the size was correct. In the picture to the left, you can see the 9 points that I drilled into the face of the fretboard. Additionally, you may be able to see the pencil marks on the fretboard. I used a straight edge to make an "X" from the edges of the frets. This allowed for a precise spot of the center of the frets. This may be more visible in the picture on the right.

Next, I took the blue abalone dots and glued them in using epoxy. This hardened after a few minutes so I had to be very careful of not getting any into the slots of the fretboard, as it could be a problem when putting the frets in.

Once the glue had dried, it was time to sand the fretboard down. To do this, we took the board to the drum sander for a few quick passes.

Additionally, this guitar was to have a compound radius on the fretboard. What this means is that there will be varying radii from the nut to the end of the  fretboard, which allows for easier playability up the neck. To do this, I used a sanding block, which allowed for me to change the settings so that at the nut there was a 12" radius and at the final fret (fret 18) there was a radius at 16". It is very difficult to show this in a picture, but you may be able to see it in the picture on the right. Also, you are now able to see the separation with the white laminate between the fretboard and the binding. Lastly, You may be able to see the sheen on the fretboard as well. This was accomplished by going through the multiple grits of Micro-Mesh, which sands the wood down to a very fine polish.

Next, it was time to fret the fretboard. This is a relatively simple process, but it can be done in multiple ways. Since I had bound my fretboard, I made the decision to use a fret press, which will be pictured shortly. Basically, the process s very simple, take a long piece of fretwire, cut it to size and press it into the slot for the fret. Finally, on each fret, you snip the edges and you have it done. One additionally thing that was completed during this time period was to take off the tang of the fret wire, where the binding would be located. This is done by using a tang snipper (black tool on the right), which allows for the face of the fret to be preserved, but take off the piece of metal that would be pushed into the slot. 

In the picture on the right, you can see what the tang snipper does. So the frets on the left have not been "fixed" yet, whereas the ones on the right are set to be pressed into the fretboard. There was a lot of trial and error in this as you don't want to cut off too much, but if you press in a fret that the tang is too big, you run the risk or pulling off your binding, which would not be any fun as you would then have to re-bind the entire thing. 

Now, it was time to press in the frets. To the left you can see the fret press doing it's work. All in all, what you have to do is place the fret in the right spot on the fretboard and pull down on a lever to make sure the fret gets seated correctly. The brass piece that is touching the  fretboard is designed to have the same radius as the fretboard. However, some of the frets were not seated completely, so I just took a small hammer and pushed them into place, so that I wouldn't run the risk of pulling the frets out while playing. 

To the right you can see the fretboard with all the frets firmly in their respective slots. One bit of housekeeping, in order to glue the fretboard on the neck, I had to omit these steps with the 12th and 8th frets. This was done so that we could make sure the fretbord was perfectly in place on the neck. We used small brads and hammered them through the 12th and 8th frets into the neck so that we had a guide. I had to be very precise with this because if the frets were somewhat off center, and not perpendicular to the neck, each not on the neck would be somewhat off, making it very challenging to play and being pretty much a big waste of time. Once this was done, I was able to press the last two frets in and get ready for the glue up.

To do this, I needed to put the truss rod in. A truss rod is a metal rod that is placed in the neck to help stabilize the neck and also allow for some movement of the neck by putting pressure in either direction to allow for relief. This means that you can slightly bend the neck in one way or the other so you have more playability. In order to get the truss rod set, I had to chisel s little bit of the top and some of the headstock down, so that the dual-action rod would be able to fit. Additionally, I used a mill file to clean up some of the burrs that we found on the truss rod from welding. Once the top and headstock were chiseled down and the truss rod fit snugly into the slot, it was time to glue up the fretboard.

To glue the  fretboard down to the neck, a special caul was used to allow for equal clamping pressure across the entirety of the fretboard. This caul is specifically designed for lutiers, as there are small cut outs in the metal which allow for the frets to be place in. Additionally, a piece of cork was placed between the board and the caul so that there was no major scratches put on the fretboard . It is very difficult to sand the fretboard down at this point since it has its frets already set in. As you can see in the picture to the right, many claps are used so that there is no gap between the neck and the fretboard. Additionally, there was a significant amount of squeeze-out (glue) that, meaning that we had a very good glue up.

After leaving the guitar as seen above for the night, it was time to take off the clamps and see how the glue up went. Overall, the glue up was a success. No gaps or anything. However, some of that squeeze-out that I discussed earlier ended up on the fretboard. Though it could be a major issue, it appears that I will be able to clean it out perfectly fine using some chisels and sandpaper. I will not deal with that until the final set up, as there may be more marks on the fretboard that I have do deal with. So now, the guitar is ready for neck shaping - my favorite part of guitar building, the neck shape is one of the things that really helps to determine the playability of a guitar for individual players.