Hi guys! It's been a while since my last post... I was at work for two weeks and rest of the time I spent playing guitar and making my second one's fretboard. This time I was definitely more confident than last time... I used the same technique as last time: coping saw as fret slotting saw and a self-made radius sanding block. I wasn't brave enough to make custom inlays so I decided to go with the same dot orientation as in my first guitar and the RS. I think it's nice and in addition, abalone is beautiful!
I started with marking the frets. I finally bought the meter long steel ruler. In fact, it cost me 4,90€ so I wonder why I didn't buy it for my first build already. I marked the slot lines with a utility knife and then the fretboard's otlines against the steel ruler. Then I cut out the fretboard with a coping saw and sanded the edges. Next I deepened the slots with the coping saw... Again I was a bit worried about slotting with a coping saw but it was a lot easier than last time as I knew a little better what I was doing.
Next up was inlaying the dots. I marked the locations by making a cross between the two frets (ex. between 2nd and 3rd fret, 4th and 5th...). Then I simply drilled with a 6 mm bit to the right depth. The dots are approx. 2 mm thick, so it's easy to drill too deep. I was really careful and very often stopped and fitted the dot in to know if I was there yet. Luckily, I managed to get ALL the holes just right.
I glued the pearl dots in with just ordinary Titebond wood glue, it seems to work fine and is easier to remove any extra than spreads of super glue. And as they are dots, the hole is perfectly the same shapen and size just by choosing the right drill bit.
I then sanded the 20" radius to the fretboard. First I used 80 grit to make it faster and finally moved to finer grits to smooth it up. After that at this point I deepened the slots to their final depth with The coping saw.
Next I made the side markers out of cocktail sticks. They are nice light wood and 2 mm in diameter. I just drilled small holes to the side of the fretboard and glued them in. After the glue had dried, I cut off the excess material and levelled the side dots with the fretboard.
Then I removed a bit material from the upper end of the fretboard to get better locating for the top nut. I like using graphite top nuts as they aren't expensive but are almost at the same level in quality with bone nuts. I fitted the nut to the slot and then glued it in with super glue.
I waxed the board with bees wax before fretting it to get a nice base coat of wax. The wax does miracles to the wood and also darkens it nicely.
As I won't have bindings to the fretboard, I just roughly cut the frets to size and taped the on a paper, next to their numbers. Then I hammered them in the slots with a plastic hammer. I used glue to fill any gaps in the slots, not to attach them as they are supposed to stay in because of the tight enough slots.
Then I just filed the ends flash with the fretnoard and made the 45° angle to them.
I'll finish them better (level and recrown) when the whole guitar is done. Next I will attach the fretboard to the neck.
Thank you very much for reading! I hope that this helped you if you had any questions. I'm trying to demonstrate with pictures as good as I can. If you anyhow still have a question in mind or, the other way round, want to advise me, I'm more than happy to hear from you through the comments or via email (craftsmanmusical6@gmail.com) I'm now waiting for my body blank to arrive and will write my next post as soon as I receive it! :) Cheers and stay tuned!
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