Fretting before or after gluing?

[Larry G]

I'm working on just my second build (both classicals). On the first build I used a traditional Spanish foot (sides glued directly into slots in the heel block), glued the fingerboard to the neck, and hammered frets in at that point. I remember that hammering frets directly over the body (reaching in to support it from behind) felt pretty precarious.

On this build, I'm using a bolt-on neck. It occurs to me that there is no reason to glue the fingerboard and then hammer frets - why not hammer frets into a detached fingerboard, (re)flatten the bottom, and glue on after fretting? The one possible drawback I can foresee is then trimming the neck flush with the fingerboard - if I goof and have to take a bit off the edge of the fingerboard I'll have to contend with the frets. I imagine, too, that any fine tuning of the fretboard surface (relieving a smidgen on the bass note side, for example) is pretty much impossible if it's fretted before gluing onto the neck.

Has anybody here tried fretting and then gluing?

[John Parchem]

Fretting first and then gluing is pretty normal and accepted way of doing it. I would suggest against flattening the bottom of the fret board after fretting. Just glue it on, it may be curved slightly at the time you are gluing it on.

Having said that I personally save the fretting until near the very end as it gives me the opportunity to fine tune the flatness of the fret board, correct very minor neck angle issues (mostly with classical guitars) and possibly sand out a slight hump at the body join. Since you have a bolt on neck, you can hold off gluing down the extension and pound or press in the frets with the neck off of the guitar, then you have the best of both worlds.

[ken cierp]

Many factories including Martin install frets and refine the boards prior to gluing them to the neck -- there are a couple of videos indicating that this is done as a quality measure, in others words, results are better than fretting after the neck is joined to the body -- that is my belief as well. Actually Bob Taylor invented and sells (pricey) a fixture for repair persons so that fretting the extension while the neck is on the body can be perform more safely.

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/fret.html

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/fretdressing.html

http://www.customguitars.com/fretbuck.html

[ken cierp]

I see that SM has a different tool for cutting the fret tang off for bound FB. Any one have one? How good does it work?

[Tim Benware]

I have one and it works very well. I rarely have to file anything because the cuts are so clean.

Edit: Also Ken, they are selling the Fret Buck now that Taylor used to have.