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You don't need to spend much. I have hardly any tools strictly dedicated for fretting - a fret rocker, a hand saw, a very cheap metal hammer (highly polished face though!), a few files, some cheap end cutters that work extremely well. All my files are good quality Grobet type but none are specifically made for fret work.
I did buy a few recrowning tools and a deadblow hammer. Wish I hadn't bothered with any of these.
Things like my feeler gauges and straight edges I consider general workshop tools, so I personally would only ascribe a percentage of their cost for fretting tasks. If I removed the money that I wasted on tools that I don't use I guess it would be nearer $200, including a factor for my straight edges and feeler gauges.

I appreciate great tools on a number of levels. I appreciate a clever design, I appreciate a tool that provides "value" for my clients, I appreciate a tool that produces superb results such as a well worn file that will skate on the finish but still mill down fret ends that are too proud due to the instrument drying out. Most of all I appreciate tools that solve the real world problems of my real world clients.

As such agree to disagree works for me - no problem.

Something else I appreciate are folks who may share a passion for Lutherie to the point where the learning and the improving is paramount to all other things. That's the guy that I want to be when I grow up..... And that's where my focus will remain.

Back to tools - I would say around 50% of what we use we made and often because Dave invented something and it can't be had anywhere necessitating making it ourselves. From saddle mills to fret buffers to headstock repair jigs to a simple piece of ebony used to "roll" the finish in crack repair, to a gauge that will tell me if I have to fill a nut slot, to a gauge that will tell me what the neck angle is when considering a reset, to a jig that permits the Jaws II to reach every fret in every location with the neck on the guitar. I appreciate a simple jig that I won't say the name of that it was given on an open forum being rather vulgar that permits one to use rare earth magnets in locations in the box that cannot be reached with my arm or anyone else's too... I appreciate even the vices that we use that we made ourselves and are not commercial offerings and we believe to be more useful to us than any commercial alternative. We have the commercial vices too and they are in a closet....

Most of all I appreciate what these tools can do for our clients over and over again with predictable, high-quality results that can be repeated over and over again as well.

I appreciate the amalgam (in many enamel shades) with the UV light that we use to use actual dental filling (in matching colors...) to fill certain nut slots in certain instances. It's as hard as human teeth and a much better way to go than bone dust and CA.

Maybe we are pretty tool centric, maybe not, regardless who cares - what difference does it make. Today I will likely work on around 5 guitars and what they will be is anyone's guess. That's something else that I absolutely love about what I do - throw it at me - I thrive on it....

When I'm done with the three S's and after the road trip I want to talk about fret removal and if anyone else wants to discuss anything related to "high-quality" fret work please feel very free.

Food for thought - all fret nippers are not created equally....

Indeed they are not, Hesh, and I will provide further food for thought by posting these links to the two Xmas presents which I have bought for myself. From all I hear, these two tools are created a lot more equally than most ...

http://www.sever.si/summit-professional ... end-cutter

http://www.sever.si/summit-professional ... adjustable

Luthiers' moans about stainless steel frets could soon be a thing of the past .

Wow - nice stuff Murray - I'm headed out the door and will respond more in a couple of hours and thanks for posting this too!

If you are going to use a long-bed hand plane as a straight edge, be sure to use one that has been ground flat to the tolerances you area after. And also remember that when a plane is ground, the blade should be in it and retracted with the lever cap at working tension, because that distorts the bed a bit. And when you use it as a straight edge, the blade should be retracted with the lever cap at working tension also to duplicate conditions when it was ground.

Just sayin'

Ed

I have lapped many a #7 (and smaller) on my ( 5 foot long) surface plate, and that is indeed the way I (and everybody else) do it, but y'know what ...I always wonder, every time I do it, does it really make a measurable difference? Given that the leverage exerted by the lever cap is totally on the frog, which is a relatively substantial piece of cast iron, I am dubious as to whether it does actually have any effect on the flatness of the finished lapped surface. If the leverage was exerted on the front of the mouth, I could see that there could be a problem.

Nonetheless, I shall continue to do it that way ... at least it doesn't do any harm ... Maybe one day I will test it out using marking blue on my surface plate and see if there is in fact a measurable difference. Or rather a perceptible difference ... there is unlikely to be any measurable difference.

A greater problem IMO is the stability of the castings on modern planes. I have lapped modern Record and Stanley plane soles and a couple of years later had the same plane back and it is out of true. This only happens with modern planes, the older ones stay true. I assume the problem is that these days the castings aren't being given enough time to season before being machined.

Fret Nippers:

Below is a pic, a rather lousy one too.... that I just took with my IPhone (sorry for the poor quality I'm trying to do a couple of things at once in the shop this morning and Monday's suck anyway....).

On the far right are my nippers purchased from our friends at Stew-Mac in 2005. On the far left are Dave's nippers also from Stew-Mac but his are older than mine. We have the really old Stew-Mac nippers too that had the red handles but I can't find them this morning.

Dave's nippers and my nippers both nip frets the same, both are good tools made from decent steel, and to the naked eye they look identicle. But they are not, sadly and Dave's are way better than mine.

Reason being that the older Stew-Mac nippers had a steeper bevel on the cutting end.

Besides nipping frets the other very common use for these tools is to use them to remove frets. Often folks, incuding me.... use the term "pull frets" which is misleading in my view to the intended way to use these tools AND can create damage to the board if one "pulls" frets.

The correct way to use these tools for removing frets is to let the jaws close with the gound flat face in direct contact with the board (preventing chipping). If one uses the jaws to get under the fret and then pulls there is nothing in contact with the board and the possibility of the board chipping is far greater.

Instead the nearly imperceivable from your vantage differences in the bevel angles between Dave's nippers and my newer nippers is pretty imporant. My nippers have a much shallower bevel and as such simply closing the jaws will not lift the fret tang all the way out of the slot. Dave's nippers have a more radical bevel and closing the jaws of his nippers will lift the fret out of the slot while, and this is imporant, the ground face remains firmly in contact with the board. Less chipping, less damage, and a clearner removal is what results from using the older Stew-Mac nippers and not my newer nippers.

The nippers in the middle are also from Stew-Mac and I like these just fine. They have a more radical bevel and work better than my newer nippers for lifting frets all the way out of the slot while still keeping their ground flat face firmly in contact with the board.

Make sense?

One more comment about these blue handled nippers from Stew-Mac. With stainless and remember please we work on all manner of plucked, stringed instruments including electrics with jumbo frets, with jumbo stainless frets I had been concerned that cutting the wire with my blue handled nippers would damage them.

Not the case and after lots of stainless refrets the jaws are as new which is what I would have hoped for.

What I still have an issue with though with stainless, especially jumbo stainless is that although my nippers cut the wire fine my hands hurt in the process. I'm not getting any younger... and my hands have some pain and stiffness these days... The pressure to cut the wire does not bother me but when the nippers "snap" though the wire I feel pain and it can be a rather loud snap too with jumbo stainless.

That's why my next stop is to take a look at the nipper solutions that Murray posted (thanks Murray!)

I have been reading this thread with some interest (and humor) as we all know that good fret work is a must to produce a great playing guitar. I for one have taken some pretty crappy guitars and made them play very well with just a good fret job and a proper setup.

What I find humorous is that some people think this is a skill that only a few posses and is some kind of rocket science...

What we are doing when we fret a guitar is setting little metal strips into wood. WOOD I say... Anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of woodworking knows full well that the nature of wood is that it moves. It moves all the time and anyone who plays guitar on a very regular basis knows that a guitar can feel and sound different from day to day.

So do all the precision leveling you want and I will guarantee you one thing that perfectly leveled neck is going to move and need another adjustment in a matter of days or even a couple of weeks. Sure, if you keep it in a temperature and humidity controlled environment all the time the likelihood of it maintaining its perfect adjustment is pretty good but guitar players are on the move from place to place and they have no idea (or interest) in worrying about the humidity of the venue they are playing next. And there is a very good chance that the humidity in a bar can get well into the 90's with so many people crammed in a small place, plus all the spilled beer and vomit on the floor.

I am not saying that is is OK to do crappy work but this idea that a neck has to be within .0005" of dead ass straight is something I find pretty ridiculous. This is really not hard stuff to do. Anyone that can handle a straight edge and has common sense can figure it out and it doesn't take a 4 year degree to understand it.

Just sayin...

But there I go being the rabble rouser again...

Cheers
Bob

That's nice Bob.

Here are a couple more of the tools that we use for fret work. The two files that you see have shop-made handles and are used for filing the ends of frets either on existing guitars that have dried out and the fret ends are proud and sharp or newly refretted instruments were we want to file the ends flush with the neck.

The smaller one with the BRW handle.... is a favorite tool of mine. What you want in this kind of file is a well worn file that started life as a OO grobet or something similiar with a fine cut and was intentionally dulled so that it would "skate" on the finish not damaging it but still cut off any proud metal from the fret ends. The longer file is more agressive and the first file that I grab on a refret and then when I get close I go to the smaller file.

They both work great I will add and are a pleasure to use.

Well yes, but I guess that we all have to work to a target at some point (whatever that is). Just don't get too obsessed with a Zeno paradox. Without question the law of very diminishing returns will set in. I'm still trying to find out how much lower the action is (or can be) on a fretboard that is 0.01 mm 'more accurate' than another. I guess it's not much more than 0.01 mm . . . especially if taken over the length of the entire fretboard. Taken over 3 frets and it's probably a different story.

Over the entire length of the fingerboard, you can adjust that with truss rods... and sometimes it will auto adjust itself with changing humidity.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

What sort of tolerance would you consider worth aiming for ? ... .001" ... 005" ... 010" ... 020" ... somewhere in between?

Careful, that's the Zeno paradox.

Still doesn't really answer my question Tai. A double action truss rod will give you some kind of control but it doesn't differentiate betwwen bass and treble side. It takes the Neck as a whole. Nor will it adjust that 0.01 mm where it may need it, it's assuming that all of that error is near the centre/middle of the fretboard. It may not be. 0.005 mm might be over frets 1 to 6, the other 0.005 mm's might be towards the end of the fretboard. Your truss rod can do nothing about that.

That figure was just me being sarcastic. Actually I don't really know what my tolerances are. The straight edge I use is a stainless steel ruler that I had my brother in-law true up for me (he is a die maker). I had him do a 24", 18" and a 6" set for me a few years back. My leveling beam is a section of an old I beam level that I lapped just as I do my planes. So I am not sure of the exact tolerances but I know they are pretty darn flat.



The only problem with that idea is that the truss rod only adjusts from the 2nd 3rd fret to the 12th or 14th and that only adjusts relief into the neck which actually bows the neck. Leveling is prior to adjusting the truss rod for relief.

Now the humidity issue is exactly what my post was referring to. After you get a nice straight fret job the temp and humidity take over changing that perfect neck.

Cheers,
Bob

Fingerboards can go out of level too, which is why they get leveled on all refret jobs. You'll be surprised how much they change.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Are you seriously talking about .005mm (five-thousandths of a milimeter)?

Relax, it's only theoretical. . . . . I think.

David-- I gather that you have a background as a machinist. You can't have gone into guitar work for the money. Machinists are poorly paid, but not as poorly paid as guitar repairmen. I enjoy the image of the flint-knapped blade, and the tree you cut with your teeth. That video on youtube might secure your reputation.

Not that I have any brief to speak for David, but how much you get paid as a repairman depends on how much you are able to ask for your services, which in turn depends on where you stand in the hierarchy.

David, I would surmise, occupies a position right at the top.

In building terms, think Traugott .. Somogyi ... vis-a-vis many who post on this forum.

I only served about a year in a machinist apprenticeship when I was young, and have held on to it only as a side hobby and interest since going full time in to lutherie. What you touch on regarding income potential though, is kind of at the heart of what I was trying to make a point of earlier though.

Can a skilled luthier do a good fret dress with no significant investment in tooling? Of course, just as MacGyver can disable a Russian ICBM with a pocket knife and a paper clip. What a skilled hobbyist or low budget entry level luthier can scrape by with is one thing. What it takes to outfit a professional shop to offer consistent world class service and earn a decent quality of life income is something else all together. If you want to talk about operating a professional service establishment, this can mean some real investment in tooling to ensure quality and efficiency. A lot of people trying to run businesses in this field may not recognize this, but that's probably at least in part why so few manage to succeed.

If our shop had every tool robbed tomorrow and I had to file an insurance claim to restore our tooling to operate at the same level it did last week, my fretting tools and supplies alone would be in the thousands. May seem like a lot, but little things add up quick, and they all contribute to goals of quality and efficiency in a way that makes our shop as profitable as it is. Running a business requires some investment.

Regarding quality and tolerances, all I can say is that this discussion has been quite revealing. We have scores of clients who have been professional musicians for decades, and had work done by shops all over the country, and gotten used to the status quo level of average acceptable fret work. Not to beat my chest, but I can tell you that their reactions after having their instruments through our shop are consistently ones of amazement. These are extremely demanding, not-easy-to-please players who have consistently found "just good enough" to be the best they could find. When they pick up their guitars from us, the consistent response is along the lines of "wow", or "holy sh*t, I never thought it could play like this". Seriously, we hear that a lot.

This is because the bar is pretty low to average for fret work. Lot's of shops believe they're doing a fine job, but really just don't realize what they can't recognize. Many will stop at a point of diminishing return, not recognizing that this is not the same as the point of discernible effect which often lies well beyond this. Or they have not developed methods (or invested in suitable tooling) to allow for quality control and efficiency to push the diminishing return point further up the quality scale.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Long thread but I don't think anyone has mentioned these.
http://www.fastcap.com/estore/pc/Pliers ... 26p287.htm

Anyone tried them? Price looks right.

Kevin Looker

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

I did a refret on an un-bound fretboard this past Saturday and it took me 5 hours. I was taking my time and a bit unorganized. I could probably do it in 4 hours no problem. It was an easy fretboard to work. It was straight with very little bow and hardly any chip out from pulling the frets. I am a bit of a perfectionist so I make sure I glue back down every single little chip out, so there is definitely more time added based on the amount of chip outs.

The refret was on a 1970 Yamaha dreadnought for the original owner. The tone was uninspiring and dead, even with the newer strings that were on it. It had the original frets which had never been worked on and the factory work was quite sloppy. The frets were not glued in (made pulling them easier though!), the ends not dressed, and the frets were not crowned, only leveled. After a refret, new nut, and set-up this guitar sounded unbelievably better than before. The owner was just beside himself about how good the guitar sounded after I got done with it. People talk about this wood, and that wood, blah blah...quality fretwork and set up is what makes a great guitar.

Hardest fretboard I had to refret so far is those Galiano fretboards. I have no idea what the fretboard is made of but the wood is extremely brittle and will chip no matter how careful you are in removing the old fret (heating, pulling with care, etc.).

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Very occasionally I've come across some frets that have been levelled but not recrowned. It's quite astonishing but I've seen it on some VERY expensive instruments too - original frets (not old enough to be otherwise!). It's very basic stuff.

I've been involved in a couple of endeavors that included both hobbyists and professionals in the same community. There is a vast difference in the tooling and equipment that a pro shop needs and uses when compared to the hobbyist. This is not to suggest that there aren't hobbyists who do great work. But a common theme from many non-professionals is to downplay or even ridicule the investment in tools that most professionals use to do consistent excellent work. I've probably invested over 20K in lutherie-specific tools, not including general woodworking machinery, dust collection, etc.



I hear this all the time too. When I got started in this business, one of the things that surprised me was the generally low level of quality I saw in fretwork from techs and hobbyist luthiers. I've been told many times that a customer's guitar plays better than when it was new after I've worked on it. Even factory frets can be quite sub-par.

Regarding micro-tolerances for fret work... I work to the level of accuracy that the guitar and player need. I have a baseline for quality work that every instrument that comes into my shop gets. But beyond that, it depends on the customer's needs and wishes, what they want to pay for, and what the guitar can benefit from. Frankly, some guitars and some players don't need a super accurate fret dress that goes into micro thousandths of tolerance. And many guitars are used and stored in such a manner that this level of accuracy would be lost in a week anyway. But a really good luthier should be able to perform extremely accurate fret work when the situation demands it.

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It will probably be alright.