Official Luthiers Forum!

For those who runs a busy repair shop:

Do you ever think about recycling fretwire? I mean after refretting a few guitars you start to get a bunch of useless fret wires... was wondering if its worth it to recycle it? (or make it into new fretwire somehow)

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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

I don't see the advantage to re-use used frets, that are probably unevenly worn, crooked or kinked when you get them out. Also, every fret as a different lenght, it would be a mess to sort it and place it on a new, different board. Frets are not expensive when bought in bulk, they are clean, straight and regular in height.

When I defret, the trash bin (or recycle bin) is never so far, and the frets jump in it one-by-one. They did their duty, now let them rest.

my 2 cents.
Francis

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

I don't mean putting old frets on another guitar, but as in melt them down, and have them drawn into new fretwires. Surely there's companies out there who does that?

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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

No one recyles fret wire. But I like to recycle my sawdust. I throw it in the forest and let it turn into new trees.

If there are, I've never heard of any.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I also recycle my sawdust and scrap wood. It goes into my fireplace which creates not only warmth but carbon dioxide which is released into the atmosphere and then gets absorbed by trees which convert it to food, which allows the tree to grows large and gets harvested and made into luthier woods which ultimately create some scraps that get thrown on the fire, then the cycle starts over again .

I remember reading, I think it was one of Frank Ford's articles on refretting in one of the big red books that he tried to think of a good way to reuse or recycle old frets and came up with nothing. After filling up a few coffee cans he just chucks em in the trash. I assume you could also take the frets to a metal recycling center. Maybe after 15,000 fret jobs you could get $2.50 in scrap metal.

You can make miniature Venetian blinds for doll houses.

I sometimes wonder how many frets would it take to make a sword out of it (not that nickel silver would make very good swords, hell not even stainless steel used in fretwires would make very good swords...)

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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

If you want to recycle on general principles, to help the environment, you could probably give the material to a metal recycle company. Don't expect to get paid for such a small amount.

If you want to use the material, you might consider some kind of sculpture where you solder the pieces together until they add up to some kind of interesting shape.

I used to fill up twelve 55 gallon drums with aluminum chips and chunks every month or two. THAT was reasonably worth doing.

It would take you about 500 luthier lives to fill up those drums with old frets. But if you DID fill them up it would be worth more than aluminum.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I recently gave a stack of old frets to my neighbor. He's a model train guy and thought they'd be cool to use as freight or railings or various other things on his layout. I give him old strings, too.

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George :-)

Right on, George.
It's all raw materials once someone is done with it.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I do occasionally reuse old frets, simply because they are more durable. Also, it makes it easy to match the size on partial refrets, since the 1930's frets were generally lower than modern frets.

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John