Fretboard divot repair.

[John Parchem]

I had a friend that wanted me to clean up some frets with divots and some very deep divots in the fretboard. The fret divots were not that deep and the frets had never been leveled so they cleaned up without issue. Even the setup stayed the same.

The fretboard divots had me stumped. I thought of cutting then out and inlaying some rosewood but deared that I never could match the color of finder oil stained rosewood.



John Hall tuned me onto a method from Frank Ford at frets.com: http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier ... divot.html
The method is really clever working fibers from the bottom of the divot up to the fretboard plane and filling both underneath and around with end grain sanding dust. I decided to leave the neck angle as it is. The current setup with the shaved bridge is very good.

I would follow the method in the link. I made some very deep cuts with a razor blade longwise along the grain of the wood; about a 1/16" apart. I then used a blade to get under and lift up the fibers a touch higher than the fretboard plane.
Razor cuts



Pulling up fibers


A bit of end grain BRW, Thin CA and a scrape back with a sharp scraper.



First 2 fret locations



The color did not really change just the picture and a bit of finger board oil, I only did the top four fret locations.

[Dave Bagwill]

Nice job.
He a bluegrass player much??

[dave d]

That's an excellent tip John. Thanks for sharing this.

[Herman]

Real good work John, this is a good tip.
Herman

[Daniel P]

Beautiful work John.

[John Link]

Excellent outcome.