Attempting a re fret.

[greg]

Hi All, my son picked up a beater SS acoustic made by the Kiso Suzuki Violin Company for $10. Its not playable in its current condition and needs new frets. Can anyone recommend a video or a resource we can use to attempt this first time project? I have looked at a bunch of YT vid's already but have not found anything that deals with necks that have bindings.

My understanding is that we use a soldering iron to heat the wire and end cutters/pincers to remove the fret wire. I have a couple of questions though

1. Is there a certain type of wire we need to get for the replacement?
2. Do we need to glue the new ones in?
3. Do we cut them to length and bevel/finish the ends before installing?
4. Can we leave the neck without frets for any length of time or do we have to get onto the replacement straight after removing the old ones?

Thanks in Advance. Greg.

Current Fret Condition.


Pic of the Guitar. Model W-65D

[Nick]

Greg, Stewmac's do a book that will tell you everything you need to know about refretting. The copy I have is an old one and was written solely by Dan Erlewine but I see the 'new' version is written by Eric Coleman in conjunction with Dan, so I suspect they've used Dan's book and Eric's added to it. The original was very usefull for a person in your position so this new one should be just as good if not better! They do plug their own line of tools in it I believe, but there are ways of doing it without buying shitloads of expensive stuff. The only 'commercial' tool I use is a fret recrowning file.
They also do a wide selection of replacement fret wire too so if you measure the existing wire and match it with something they have (going more the fret width, obviously you'll want the height to be taller!) and you could get it all shipped together.

[simso]

My understanding is that we use a soldering iron to heat the wire and end cutters/pincers to remove the fret wire. I have a couple of questions though

1. Is there a certain type of wire we need to get for the replacement?
2. Do we need to glue the new ones in?
3. Do we cut them to length and bevel/finish the ends before installing?
4. Can we leave the neck without frets for any length of time or do we have to get onto the replacement straight after removing the old ones?

Refretting is an easy job, doing a good refret means doing it a few times, for a novice doing there own refret, you can let alot slip by.

Your questions,

We heat the frets up prior to removal in case the previous person glued them in
Yes specific wire with tangs (stewmac online), no disrespect but theres no way you would be ready to use any other wire. But in reality you can use anything for fret jobs.
You dont need to use glue but it helps, you can float them in a bed of glue, or just let the tangs do there job
Rough cut to size before fitting in, then once fitted snip the protruding ends
You dont need the frets to be fitted, when you remove them start playing fretless, now thats a challenge, just the fret slots need to be relatively clean when you put the new frets in

Good luck, ask away

[jeffhigh]

It's hard to be sure from the pictures, but I would probably do a level and crown on the existing frets, doesnt look like they are too low.
Measure the height at the wost divot.
If you do refret, you will need to cut the frets just slightly long and then remove a section of the tang at the ends to clear the binding.

[MBP]

Hard to tell but you might get away with a fret dress. More then likely.

You cut them a bit over length. Press or hammer them in and then snip them a tad over length then file to size then bevel.
When snipping them dont snip up and down, snip from the sides. Up and down pulls the frets up.

Be careful pulling the frets to not pull half the fretboard away.
Just put a bit of glue on the ends and the middle.

Your fretboard is bound so you have to snip abit of the bottom away.

Jeff beat me too it.

[kiwigeo]

Hard to tell but you might get away with a fret dress. More then likely.

+1

Wouldnt hurt to tidy up the ends of those frets regardless.....they're shocking.

[Trevor Gore]

The best way to get good at fret jobs is lots of practice...

The place to start: do a fret dress on this guitar because, like others, I think that'll be all you need. If it's not, well, you've had some good practice! You don't have to get all the divots completely out. They generally look much worse than they measure up. Straighten the neck (using the truss rod) as best you can with the strings off, then use a flat honing stone to level the frets. Work the board as uniformly as you can. You should have grinding marks across the full length of all the frets you want to play on. The flat on the top of the frets should be less than 1mm wide unless you have really uneven frets. You can re-crown the frets with a proper fret crowning file (use the diamond ones, expensive, but worth it) or with just a standard small triangular file (needle file or just a bit bigger) with the sharp edges ground off so you don't mark the fretboard (mask between the frets first). Make sure you keep the crown on the centreline of the wire by leaving a tiny width of flat, then polish that out with fine (800 grit) abrasive paper. Then use metal polish if you want.

Bound fretboards like this are not the easiest place to start when re-fretting, so if the fret dress is not enough, get back and there will be plenty of help with more specific advice.

[Kim]

If this is a once off excursion into lutherical lunacy my advise is to pull and replace only those first few frets that present a divot or two. I don't see the point of grinding away all of those good frets further up the neck down to 'just' playable so they match the few bad eggs at 1 to 5 that are the usual suspects. The danger of doing that is you can end up screwing the whole job if you don't know how to set up and deck. Far better to replace those few that are worn and 'then' deck all the frets so you have more meat to play with should you need a second bite at the cherry.

What ever you decide you cannot help but benifit from a vist to Frank Ford's 'excellent' website..Frets.com..

Here's a link that deals specifically with refret issues. http://frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Tec ... ouble.html

Cheers

Kim

[seeaxe]

Hi Greg

I have one of these, I bought it when I was 18 yrs old, its now a very old guitar. Mine is cherry sunburst. If you only paid $10 for this, you have a bargain IMHO. It has a ply top but it sounds great (at least to me). I had a fret job done a while back in Auckland, not actually sure whether he replaced them or dressed them, I think the latter, but its now the lowest action, easiest guitar in the world to play. I would part with all other guitars, bought or made, and a lot of other things , before I parted with my one.

Is yours unplayable just because of those frets? Doesnt look like it. Or is there something else wrong? Bent neck?? Broken truss rod??

+1 for dressing them before you try to replace them.
If you do end up taking them out, you will need to dress them anyway to get them perfect, so why not try that first as Trev suggests.

You will have to remove the nut first and take the machine heads off, so you can level them. This guitar has a zero fret, so level that just the same as all the others and you should get a very low action in the first position, if you get it right. I think some people lave the zero fret high, but if the neck is straight you shouldnt need to do that.

+1 for the diamond crowning files too, they are really quick

Then +1 again for Kim's suggestion - it'll be only the first few frets that are worn and it will be a lot more managable job with only a few frets to sort out.

Final point, if you heat the frets to get them out, remember the binding on the fretboard is plastic, so dont go mad, if you melt it you are stuffed.

A good tip I got from the Irving Sloane book was to buy an old pair of pincers from a second hand store and grind the top until you have removed the outside bevel. You will have a very sharp, chisel like bevel on the inside of the pincers, the sharper the better. You can use this to get under the fret edges and lever them gently up. Because the pincers are wide, they dont mark the (rosewood) fretboard. It will cost you less than the Stewmac equivalent and you wont have to pay postage.

There are lots of books in the (Auckland)library that will tell you how to do it and you can buy fret wire from Guitarparts in napier, so you dont have to go to Stewmac.

Having said that, if you do end up going to Stewmac for stuff you are unlikely to be dissappointed and their service is frankly fantastic.

Good luck anyway
Cheers
Richard

[greg]

Hello folks... Thanks for all the feed back.

It never occurred to me to think about a fret dress. I took some measurements of the fret heights on both this guitar and another guitar I have that plays very nicely. I have summarized the heights in the following table. The measurements are in mm. I could not measure the depth of the divots because the end of the micrometer was to fat.



The thing I noticed was that the Yamaha has less fret height with some marginal divots but plays very nice. What I think might be the issue is the very first fret, just after the nut. You can see from the table that it is a good 25% plus higher than the next fret. This plus the divots made it tough to play.

This is the fret in question.



So, based on this info, does this confirm that a fret dress is the way to go?

[greg]

Just adding that the height of the fret on the Yamaha is consistently lower under the E-6 string than the E-1 string. Because this is consistent, can I assume the this is something I should try and replicate with a fret dress?

Cheers
Greg

[seeaxe]

There are many better qualified than I to offer advice, but I'm going to anyway - you get to choose whether you take it.

I would suggest you get that zero fret a lot nearer the other fret heights before you try to level them, as whatever you use will sit on it and produce uneven wear at the other end on the fretboard.

Then I use a piece of 25 by 25 aluminium tube extrusion with some wet and dry/fine emery cloth stuck on one side with d/s tape. Its about as long as the fret board and is straight. I use this over all of the frets until I get a level surface on the top of all of them. If one of them is low, this can take a while and you can appear to take an alarming amount of metal off some frets. This is a be careful and take your time job. Stewmac do a wider version of my 25 by 25 tube, with the fretboard radius built in but thats about 20 times the cost of your guitar..... You can also use their timber fret radius blocks but they look a bit short to me.

Then use the crowning file to round them over and bingo. You can do a quick check with the straightedge or re file/sand a tiny flat to check each fret is in line.

Depending on what kind of fretwire it is, the height of the fret would have orginally been somewhere between 1.1mm and 1.3mm, so sounds like you still have some fret to play with.

If you level the zero fret with the others then the bass strings will sit on it the same as the treble ones. I would have thought that the difference in action (height above fretboard) is usually generated by the saddle being higher on the bass side, and not by trying to lower frets one side or the other - not sure what thats about. Sounds like it might be a bit difficult to do that on your first fret dress.

Good luck again.

Cheers
Richard

[jeffhigh]

There's a good level and crown tutorial here
http://www.frettech.com/
though Like seaxe, I prefer to use a full length leveling beam (mine is an aluminium spirit level with 320 grit attached.
Measuring the depth of the divots will tell you whether it is worth doing a fret dress or whether the frets will end up too low
Sounds like the zero fret is too high by far
What exactly is the playability problem with the guitar at present that makes you think it needs a refret?

[Nick Payne]

Have a look at frets.com: http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier ... ret01.html