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Interesting, but nope. That looks way too brain intensive. I don't think my head could handle that... Unless i had slammed my fingers in a car door and needed a way to continue playing the guitar...

IIRC, there was a period in the 70s during which it was very popular to epoxy frets into loose fitting slots. This was seen as an advance over the caveman practice of banging them in with a hammer. Most likely Schneider was partly just going with the common practice of the times. Also, stainless steel frets were not available then, and SS rod would have been the only way to get SS frets. He may have been trying to increase sustain.

Ivory frets - these would have been used with gut strings. I can't imagine them lasting more than a few days with steel strings.

IMO, if you want to glue in frets, you might as well. High quality epoxy will hold them fine. No harm except to your time and labor... (or any 3rd party that is asked to repair it)

The biggest problem would be cleaning up the glue after they go in. I wouldn't want to deal with that mess.

Thats what happens when you play too close to an electromagnet with a metal bottleneck slide.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Rob, go ahead and try it if you like. You could have experimentally glued one down to a piece of fretboard scrap in the time it has taken me to read through this thread. If I am not mistaken, plenty of old lutes had tied-on frets. But glued frets seem to present a different problem. The potential problem is this: If glued frets fail (maybe they won't) or when they wear (they most certainly will), you will struggle much more to replace them than you would struggle right now with cutting those slots. I'm not even factoring in the time it will take you to nip and file off those bent tangs. Nor am I factoring in the cost of a new set of undamaged fret wire. New wire would be cheap. Prepping old, damaged wire would be worth the value of your time. My time is precious to me. If you are bent on trying it, then go for it. But I know what I would do.
Patrick

Patrick... not sure what you mean by prepping old damaged wire? I don't recall anyone saying anything of the like. I do agree that in order to do what I am thinking... i would probably need to get rid of the tangs in order to glue them..or find an alternative - which I am not proposing. Does that equal the time to cut the slots? I have no idea. Mebbe. It is what it is.

I guess someone could time how long it takes but it doesnt' sound like a huge issue to overcome. I am sure there are some luthiers who still slot their fretboards vs just buying a preslotted one. Are they wrong? Is their time worth less than yours? Is anyone's time so precious that they are wasting their timebuilding a guitar at all? Maybe you can tell me... What's the value of trying something different and learning from it? I guess that's better left for some philosophical discussion which is hardly my intent here.

You do touch upon something that I did ask... would it really be a struggle to replace them? Someone offered the idea that heating the fret with a soldering iron would loosen them up. Do you disagree? Doesn't sound like a whole lot of work, but there certainly would be some cleanup issues. I guess that's something i'd have to consider which is why i asked the question and looked for opinions. Thnx for the thought.

Rob

[quote="Robert Lak"]Let’s say for some odd reason i really didn't want to cut the slots in the fingerboard and that i had some defective fretwire that was missing the tangs...

[quote="Robert Lak"]Patrick... not sure what you mean by prepping old damaged wire? I don't recall anyone saying anything of the like.

Robert, you've gotten lots of input. Let us know how it turns out.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Very good. One sign of gettin old for sure! Forgot i posted it that way! I think i wanted to eliminate the need for removing the tangs from the discussion not really thinking that that would be picked up as the focal point. Guess it back-fired.

Who of us didn't have done sort of idea on how to do things differently on a guitar when we first started building?

I say go for it.


Sadly u will probably realize, like most of us, that your idea

1. Has been done before
2. Is over complicating a simple task
3. Doesn't work

Anyhow it seems you don't want anyone to know what you are wanting to try so I doubt you will get much more useful info.

Rob,
I apologize if I misread your initial post. You said you "hypothetically" had a bunch of defective fret wire missing the tangs. I assumed you had a lot of tang remnants to file off. If I made an assumption based on my own misunderstanding, then it was my bad. But...if you'll read it again, you can probably see why I jumped to that misunderstanding. In any event, sorry about that. I still think you'll put in a lot less work if you simply stick with the normal way of doing things.

Patrick

cphanna said:


I agree 100% with that.

So far you have not gotten one bit of info that you didn't already post in your first thread. Pretty much everyone agrees it is a bad idea so there isn't much of an idea flow going on here.

I say you take cphanna suggestion and experiment for yourself instead of talking about it. You can find out first hand what works and what doesn't. Who knows maybe you will come up with a new revolutionary way of attaching frets and we will all be amazed...

Cheers,
Bob

Patrick.. My bad from the get go. After getting reminded of the way i posted initially it's completely clear why some of the posts went the direction they did. But you're still not far off. I think i will need to file/grind off the tangs. So yeah, that's a big minus. I am fully aware of that.

It's not about the frets except you have got to have frets right? I know someone mentioned fretless, but i'm guessing there's a reason that most people use them and I really don't want to reinvent the neck (well, not until my third guitar anyway... )

I really just wanted t know if epoxy (or glue?) was viable. I'm getting conflicting answers and i guess i'll just have to try it out.

Thnx
Rob

The answers aren't conflicted regarding epoxy. Yes it will hold them. Yes it will damage your fretboard when you try to do a refret.

To me:
"Heating the fret with a soldering iron should soften the epoxy to make removal fairly easy."

Conflicts with:
"Yes will damage your fretboard when you try to do a refret."

Why don't you just try it and find out for yourself instead of talking about it?

It seems you keep posing the same questions but fail to do anything to prove to yourself what the results will be.

JUST DO IT.

Try putting some epoxy on a rosewood fret board, letting it set, and then try taking it off. The soldering iron takes the fret off, not the epoxy

Are you actually intending to try this, or is just an exercise in thinking out side the box?

Let us know how it turns out. Pictures would be greatly appreciated.

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

"Try putting some epoxy on a rosewood fret board, letting it set, and then try taking it off. The soldering iron takes the fret off, not the epoxy"


Once the fret is off, you can sand off the epoxy. How long lasting epoxied on frets will stay would be a concern to me if I were doing it, but installing them or removing them I wouldn't see a problem. Why this is the best solution for the O.P. only he knows.

Judging by some of the comments above its easy to see why we loose valued members. The OP asked a simple question, and got all this in return.
Good on the few who answered civilly.

Sent from my D5503 using Tapatalk

So having a conversation about something is why we loose members?? That doesn't make much sense.

The chances of fretboard damage is very likely. You can heat the frets with a soldering iron and this will reduce the chances of damage. If you have ever tried to undo something epoxied together you will know that you still run a risk of damage. All the heat will do is reduce that risk, not eliminate it.

I’m not about to leave over this, but thanks for the support.

To be honest I’m a big boy. I hold public office (minor) and if you think this is contentious you should try raising someone's taxes. This is so first grade compared to politics. Some people are resistant to change at any cost, others feel threatened that by using the status quo they might appear backwards or inept when something else comes along. Remember all the controversy over bolt-on necks and how much the sound transmission via the neck joint would be lost without a firm wood to wood contact?

This isn’t nearly as big a deal. Matter of fact, I doubt that anyone else will want to use it. But I want to be the “first’ so I’m going to hold it close until I do it. Then I’ll put it out there and everyone can get a good laugh, pooh-pooh it and tell me how the sound is going to suffer. But I’ll have had fun and I still think it’s a cool idea if it works at all.

In the meantime, I'll keep responding until no one else has an opinion. I do appreciate those who have taken the time to answer, and believe it or not negative comments are just as valuable as positive.

Now… would CA be better or worse? Other less damaging options?

CA would be worse for removal.

Oh and I think you could use this form in your office. This is of course the internet version. It could be easily modified to fit your needs

OK Zeke, you get the baton, and lead the parade until further notice.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Haha sorry. I'm stuck working at the new shop. I have no where to go (I sleep in the office). The internet is all I have to occupy my time at the moment. Guess I got a little crazy with the posting. I'll shut up now

Not before you twirl that baton, my friend!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker