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Sawing fret kerfs in an ebony board this evening. I had originally used a template and miter box to start the cuts but deepened them with out the miter box. Last time I used this miter box the slots ended up not perpendicular to the plane of the board. Anyway, I realized near the end of the one slot that the saw had skipped out of the slot and so saw beside where I the fret should go, just on one side of the slot[headinwall] . I put the board back in the template/ miter box and sawed the fret slot in the correct place. The result is that the kerf on the bass side is the 0.6 mm and on the treble side it is 1.4 mm. Any way I can remedy this? Perhaps crimping the fret tangs? Fill and resaw?

I appreciate your thoughts

Stefan

I occasionally ran into this when I was cutting slots in a miter box. Every once in a while something would slip or get out of alignment and a slot would come out a bit wide. To fix it I would fill the slot with a piece of wood (ideally the same wood as the fretboard and make it a tight fit). I'd flood the slot and filler strip with CA glue and then go back and fill and tiny gaps with ebony dust and CA. Then I would re-cut that slot. This method seemed to work pretty good for me.

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
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Hi Josh,

Thanks for your advice,

I tried this last night but as my slot is wider on one end (I should have used your technique before trying to saw it in the right spot) it was very difficult to get a shape a piece of ebony to fit. So this morning I used a 1/8" router bit and made a clean slot taking out the whole mess. Then I cut a piece of ebony from the left over fret board from the end and glued that in, the grain orientation matches. I'll level and resaw when tomorrow when the glue dries but am now feeling optimistic.

Cheers

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

Sounds like you have a good fix underway. Any chance of getting some before and after pix (if you've taken any)?

Regards,

Erik

Here are some photos of the repair. If you look closely at the board you can see the outline of the inlay. I may get some fingerboard dye and hope that smoothes everything over.

I used tightbond to do this repair but in retrospect wonder if wicking in thin CA glue after the piece has been tapped in would have been better.

am now considering doing this repair to all 22 slots! see other post on fret position precision, (time to buy a commericial miter box / template set up)

Cheers,

Stefan