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I'm having trouble finding this at a good price. Ace hardware has it for like 5 dollars for a single wheel, which is too much.

I'm using them to polish frets after crowning and found it to work very well and forgiving. I would use green compounds and with a fine cut triangle file, it would leave a very shiny finish without having to spend time sanding the frets.

Where can I find a one stop shop where I can buy green and black compounds as well as bulk amount of dremel buffing wheel/mandrel? They do wear out fairly fast...

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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 had a quick look on the bay and they seem to be selling both those items in bulk inexpensive from china/HK

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Amazon is your friend.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

FWIW the new Dremel buffing wheels that snap on are great. They're kind of like mini real buffing wheels, and much more useful than the old hard felt ones that screwed into the mandrel. That said I've not tried them with frets yet.

I'm not sure how everyone else polishes frets, but sandpaper is very tedious, not to mention they become useless basically after a few rubs, so you would need to constantly shift the sandpaper around in order to get good cutting action. I've tried fret erasers and found them to be a huge waste of money. The pieces rub off too quickly and doesn't even do that good of a job polishing the sides of the fret (which is where they often need more attention). I've not tried the Stewmac silicone polish wheels but some have mentioned that you must be extremely careful with those or else you can actually gouge the fretwire... too dangerous if you ask me.

About a year ago I was grappling with the problem of quickly and effectively polishing frets, and tried the dremel buffing wheel with green compounds and have found them to be just the right solution. It is impossible to gouge the fretwire with those because the cloth buff is too soft to do that, but in conjunction with green compound it polishes the fret to a high shine and erases the file mark in one step. The result is clean shiny frets that impresses customers. Only thing I had to be careful with was Gibson with their binding nubs... it destroys them.

I'm also experimenting with using nylon brushes in conjunction with black compound (emery) to help erase deeper file marks and scratches then followed by green and then jeweler's rouge.

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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 use the dremel wheels too with semi-chrome paste. I like the felt wheel myself better than the cotton sewn wheels.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Those Dremel snap on things cost way too much. One shop was asking as much as 5.99 for ONE of those wheels... for a disposable wheel it's too much to ask I think. I do like the hard felt wheel as well.

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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

Steel wool. 00 000 0000

For fret polishing I use 0000 steel wool after crowning the frets with a #300 diamond file from SM. That's followed by micromesh pads lengthwise along the board - I work my way up through about half the stack and that gives me the polish I want.

I usually get my Dremel buffing wheels from Amazon - they are handy for spot polishing small parts.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I hate steel wools. It's dangerous for magnetic pickups (make sure you fully protect magnetic pickups from it) and the little pieces of wool goes everywhere. Plus it's hard on your hands too. I used micromesh for a while until it just became too tedious, not to mention micromesh is expensive and doesn't last all that long doing frets. Dremel buffing wheel does it all in one step.

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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