Re fret leveling and recrowning on a new neck

[.philip Ingber]

Hello all, happy summer!

I’m starting to work on leveling the frets on a new build. I checked the neck with a notched ruler and it’s dead level (happy). Using a rocker, I found 1 full fret that’s high and one half of two different frets that are high. I’m using a “fret kisser” to bring those frets level with the others. I’m assuming that since I found so few high frets, I don’t need to do a “complete” leveling with a beam (or am I mistaken)?

If I don’t use a beam (since after using the fret kisser, everything is level) and since I only leveled 3 frets, can I just recrown those offending  frets? If I do use a beam, then everything has to be recrowned. My thought is the less meat I take off of frets the better and since the majority of the frets are level, why take any meat off of them.

I don’t know if I made myself clear.. opinions?

Phil

[Joe Shuter]

Fretboards sometimes try to trick you by pretending to be  perfectly level. The only sure way to know if all of the  Fretboard is level is to level it with a sanding beam. I use a sharpie marker on all the frets. I Run my  sanding beam over  the whole fretboard lightly. If all of the sharpie marks are gone, it's level. If some the  marks are still there it isn't level. The beam doesn't lie. It doesn't take all that much time to recrown. At least you are sure it is dead level. Scooter 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Robert O'Brien Guitar Building Forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to obrien-forum...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/obrien-forum/9d5f2a9c-87c0-495d-86f8-b5f162c116b8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Stephen Foss]

Phil,

I'll second Joe's opinion. For ALL the details, see the Lutherie Academy's Kent Everett's fretting video; highly recommended. Michael Bashkin also has a course offering, but I haven't seen that one.

Steve