Removing frets from an ebony fingerboard

[ozziebluesman]

Hi there,

I am going to help a friend over the holidays to remove and replace the frets in a nice old Gretch. When playing the guitar the string often gets hung up on the first string.

I was going to heat up the fingerboard with the hair dryer and use the Stew Mac fret nipping pliers to carefully pull them out. We are going to replace the frets with jumbo frets to cover up any damage when the frets come out. I know this is going to be a delicate job.

Does anyone have any tips that may help to remove the frets without damage?

Cheers

Alan

[Phil Mailloux]

Well the easy solution is to clamp and superglue the culprit frets if its only a couple of them. If you insist on removing the frets, you don’t need to heat the fingerboard (never heard of that for fret removal), you just use a soldering iron to heat up the fret by stroking it with the iron then use fret pullers to remove the fret. You should have minimal chipping this way. If you do have chipping, just superglue the chip back into its cavity and sand that flat when dry

[ozziebluesman]

Thanks Phil, never thought of a soldering iron.

Thank you

Alan

[kiwigeo]

Alan,

+1 on the soldering iron. I have a pair of Stewmac fret pullers that I find handy for fret pulling jobs.
Before installing the new frets bevel the slot with a triangle file to reduce chance of the ebony chipping during the next fret pull job.

[nutsdan]

Give the board a good dose of lemon oil before starting as a dry board chips a lot more.

[Nick]

I may be teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs here and forgive me if I am but.......
As Phil stated with the soldering iron, also use a small pair (12mm wide jaw) of nippers as opossed to the more common woodworkers pair. Starting at one end of a fret don't 'pull' or lever the fret up with a sideways movement so much as just close the jaws slowly until they hit the tang, this will gently lift that piece of the fret up due to the wedge shape of the inside of the jaws. Also due to the fact that you are keeping the face of the nippers down against the fretboard, it reduces the chance for chip out as the jaw is pushing against and supporting that piece of the board. Move down the fret doing this along it's length, this will lift the fret up past the tang 'tooth' and the whole fret should lift out easily then.
I've done a few refrets and have found this method to be the best and have only had to CA glue the odd chip back in.

[ozziebluesman]

Thanks Nick. I haven't done a re-fret before so this is new to me or I should say getting the old frets out without damage is a new experience for me. I think if I take it real easy it should be ok. The frets are very thin to so that is a good thing. We are going to use jumbo frets to replace the old ones.

Nutsdan that's not such a bad idea either with the lemon oil treatment. I reckon the guitar has lived in a very dry environment for a long period of time or the humidity control was not right when the guitar was first built.

Martin I am aware of the three corner file treatment to the fret slots to avoid chipping.

The small nippers may be an advantage too!

Cheers

Al

[charangohabsburg]

I use a dedicated soldering iron with a tip I filed a grove in. This not only saves nerves for sitting steady on the fret, but also provides a more efficient heat transfer.



The nippers I use are common, cheap ones, with a modified, ground edge:

[ozziebluesman]

A picture paints a thousand words.

Thank you Markus.

Cheers

Alan

[charangohabsburg]

Thanks Alan.

I forgot to mention that I find that repairing chipout on an ebony fretboard is mainly a question of time you could use to do more interesting things. Apply heat generously, just not charcoaling the wood. You will feel it when the fret starts to come out, don't force it. Ebony is about the easiest wood to hide imperfections: sawdust and CA are your friends when you lost missing chips or if there are too many of them to put back. Touch-ups of this kind remain completely invisible after sanding. Oh, and of course, even if you charcoal the wood with the soldering iron, you wouldn't notice it on an ebony fretboard . Just kidding, the frets might not hold very well in charcoal.

[peter.coombe]

I run a bead of water along the fret, the steam produced by the soldering iron as it heats the fret and the water softens the ebony and then it very seldom chips. This method will also soften just about any glue that may have been used to glue the frets in. As already said, a dry board chips a lot more.

[rocket]

That sounds like a good method Peter
Rod.

[ozziebluesman]

Ok frets are out. I ground a small pair of nippers to do the job. Used some lemon oil on the fingerboard and then run a very sharp blade on the sides of the frets. Heated them up with the soldering iron and very carefully eased the frets out with the nippers. I copied the nipper idea and filed the nippers so one edge was not touching and the other was. That half mm allowed the fret to be levered out rather than just pulling upwards. Two very small chips on the first and eleventh fret where glued back in with some black superglue. My friend Michael did the job under my watchful eye and it all went very smoothly. Thank you to you all for your suggestions and specialty tool pictures.








We now have the issue of finding some fret wire to fit. Being a Gretch it has to be different so we measured the fret slots at .025 inch or .63mm and the fret tang is 0.26 inch or 0.68 mm wide.

Can anyone help with where to purchase frets to suit? Does the frets tang need to be a little wider as the old frets had lifted?

Cheers and thanks again for you valuable help.

Alan

[Bob Connor]

G'day Alan

I have some fretwire here that has a tang of .028" that was sent in a group buy from Jescar a few years ago that went a bit haywire.

They re-sent wire with .023 tang and told us to keep the wider tang stuff.

I believe I have evo and jumbo stainless steel fretwire if it's any good to you. The jumbo is like Les Paul jumbo frets.

If you think it might suit the purpose I'll send some up as I certainly won't use it.

Regards

[ozziebluesman]

Bob do you think the 0.28 inch will be an ok fit? The frets that come out where very loose as I believe the guitar has lived in a very dry environment for a long period of time. Is the 0.28 inch jumbo wire if so can you send some up please? If you have no use for the evo and the stainless send some up please?

Cheers

Alan

[jeffhigh]

Alan, Are you measuring the tang or the barbs for width?
The tang should always be less than the slot width, it's the barbs that provide the grip.
I'd be using glue in the slots

[ozziebluesman]

Very good point Jeff as I am not measuring from the barb! The 023 stew mac jumbo fret wire I have here is very sloppy in the slot. That was why I reckoned 0.26 might be what we need. 0.28 might be a little too snug. I don't want to force the frets in and maybe do some damage!

Cheers

Alan

[jeffhigh]

If the tang is wider than the slot you can end up backbowing the neck and with the single action trussrod you are stuffed.

[jeffhigh]

this chart may help
http://www.lutherie.net/fret.chart.html

[ozziebluesman]

Thanks Jeff.

I have just measured the old fret tang at the barb like I should have in the first place and it is 0.37 and it looks like most of the Dunlop fret wire has that tang width. Getting some where now!

Cheers

Alan

[charangohabsburg]

Geez, if some extraterrestrial read up on this thread they certainly will not attack planet earth, because they will know that they would have no chance to win against its inhabitants which are playing really huge guitars (size calculated on the basis of commonly used fret tang width ).

[Kim]

Geez, if some extraterrestrial read up on this thread they certainly will not attack planet earth, because they will know that they would have no chance to win against its inhabitants which are playing really huge guitars (size calculated on the basis of commonly used fret tang width ).

This is Australia Markus, were we 'DO' play really huge guitars

[charangohabsburg]

Geez, if some extraterrestrial read up on this thread they certainly will not attack planet earth, because they will know that they would have no chance to win against its inhabitants which are playing really huge guitars (size calculated on the basis of commonly used fret tang width ).

This is Australia Markus, were we 'DO' play really huge guitars

I'm sorry Kim. I did not know that this is only the toy guitar, downsized model:



...of the real Australian guitar! (show off some pictures of the real thing please! )

[kiwigeo]

Best use for a Maton

[DarwinStrings]

Here is a half scale model I made to give a customer a rough idea of what the finished item will be like Markus. So far she seems happy with the way things are going except that she has asked me to add a ensuite to the kids bedroom as well as the main.

Jim