Acoustic Guitar Construction

Ken suggests that folks make themselves a backer board to press the ends of the frets firmly in place as they are being staked in position with c/a glue and held firmly while the ends are cut off. No problem with the concept at all, but Ken suggests that we make the backer out of a handy piece of wood and some 1/8" brass wire. My guess is that the specified brass wire won't mar the fretwires, which sounds like a good idea. What's a common source of brass wire? Copper's pretty easy to come by, a hunk of Romex of the right gauge yields up all the copper we'd want, but I'm at a loss of who's likely to sell brass wire retail, or what they might sell it for. I do have some 1/8" brazing rod in the shop, but I think that's copperclad mild steel. Is that hard enough to mar fretwire?

I've also seen other fretting instructions mention running a triangular file along each fret slot so as to chamfer each slot and make sure the fret will sit fully seated in its slot. Worth doing, or excessively conservative?

Thanks, folks.

In concept you could use anything that raises the center of the caul -- brazing rod will work, so would coat hanger wire or strips of wood. Clamping too forcefully is what will dent the fret wire if you use hard shims.

Never heard of chamfering the entire fret slot -- and that certainly would not assure proper seating and/or retention of the fret wire -- sounds like hokum to me. Now knocking off the corners of the slots along the edge is a good idea and one I've been meaning to add to the instruction. The reason for it however is to prevent splinters if the wire pops up during installation and in the future when the frets may be pulled out for replacement.

My local Home Depot sells that brass rod, so I'd try the big-box stores as well as the smaller hardware stores. Usually found in the fasteners aisle, with the threaded rod and such.

I used a piece of 1/4" mdf board and two tounges cut from oak flooring on the edges worked fine.

peter havriluk wrote:I've also seen other fretting instructions mention running a triangular file along each fret slot so as to chamfer each slot and make sure the fret will sit fully seated in its slot. Worth doing, or excessively conservative?

I do it. The "theory" behind it (from my understanding) is that the angle formed by the tang and bottom of the fret wire is not 90* but slightly rounded which can hold the wire slightly up. Seems to work well for me. I run the file through lightly just to knock the edge off square.