Gypsy Guitar Selmer Style Oval Hole

[Herman]

The fingerboard: 46 mm/1.8" wide at the nut and 57 mm/2.25" at the body.
Made of Wengé, one of my favourites and hard as Ebony, but much much more resonant. For the frets I use medium/medium German Silver from SM. These are quite soft, but on the other hand very easy to work with.
This time I hammered the frets. I did use a pressing caul before, but somehow I get better results with the hammer. All on the kitchen table and a marble plate. (Left over from a window sill.)
The frets are locked with a drop of CA glue in the slot.
The zero fret will be made of a bit higher fret (left over from a bass build). I install that one after the neck is attached to the body and the leveling of the frets. The zero one won't be in the way.

[John Link]

Be careful with the zero fret and hammering, if you hammer it in. (Don't know your plans.) Hammering it in puts enough lateral pressure on the wood above it so as to cause that little chunk to either split or actually part company with the fret board, according to reports I have read. Myself, I've never used one but intend to, as I think the ZF is probably the "better mouse trap" compared to the traditional nut. My thinking is like yours, that it ought to be a little higher than the other frets to provide for vigorous plucking of open strings when the music benefits from that. But there is more to it than this. Zero frets, if NOT driven in, provide an easy way to adjust action. That is ...

Leave the slot wide enough for the zero fret so that it can easily be interchanged with frets of higher or lower vertical clearance, to suit the owner and his or her playing style. Unlike all the other frets, the zero fret is kept in its slot simply from the downward force of the strings. Might want to reinforce the slot with generous amounts of CA glue and use a fret with a long vertical. And perhaps file down the "grippers" to facilitate getting it in and out without damaging the sides of the slot.

If one wanted to get really tight about it all, the treble end of the "taller" ZF could be filed down so that it did not provide as much space between the unwound B and E strings and the first fret, thereby making them a little easier to punch down. The bare strings are harder to fret compared to the wound, for me at least. In any case, zero frets can be adjusted, just like nuts, if you start out with one that is tall enough. There is no law that says it must be the same height all the way across.

As part of the whole package of a custom built guitar, you could provide several zero frets each with a different height, assuming removal would not entail damage to its slot. You can do this with nuts too, but it is a lot more work. And nut removal is somewhat destructive.

Food for thought, anyway.

[Dave Bagwill]

Good stuff!

[Herman]

Hey John,
That is really good advise. Thanks. I'll follow that. I'll let know how the height of the zero fret turns out.
Herman

[Herman]

Little bummer:
I have the fitting of the dovetail right as the neckangle is. Only drawback is that the area of the fingerboard extension on the body is not completely flat. It has a down curved slope to the upper transverse brace.
Normally I would flatten the area a bit. but here the top is so thin (2mm/0.078"). I do not dare to sand that much thinner. I could make a black shim under the fingerboard and fill the gap, but that would make its appearence ugly.

Two options left imo:
-Glue extra wood underneath the surface of the top and create some meat to sand down the area, or
-Glue the fingerboard as it is and having a slight bend above the 14th fret.
I guess I'll go for the latter option.
Tips or advise?
Thanks Herman

[Herman]

Did not post for some time. Not that I am not making any progress, but there is little to mention. I carved the neck and did a lot of fine sanding. The bulk was taken off with a spokeplane. The curves and the final form I make with a rasp.
To make things smooth I use a scraper and sandpaper. I always go slow and take several days. If you go too fast and too deep a neck could get lost. A gypsy guitar has an clear D-shaped profile, almost like a classical guitar. A very flat back side.
At the moment gaps under the frets on the fingeboard side are filled with stained epoxy and the side dots are glued in. No pic of that, 'cause it looks very uggly. Would make my work look bad! Ha! Post that later, when it is flattened.
This is how the back side of the headstock looks now:

[Dave Bagwill]

Dang, you do nice work!