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After the radial bristle wheel discussion, this is what I came up with.

The right two wheels slide forward or back on a pair of oak keys.

Thanks again to Dave Collins for doing the heavy lifting and generously sharing his innovation.

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Well that's one of the slickest things I've ever seen!  Nice work and looks like an absolute blast to operate.  Cool touch with the removable side panels for wheel-changing. What RPM's are you running?

Nicely done David, very cool.  I like what you did with the sliding halves which should make it easier to have the wheels not in use not interfering with the wheels you are using.  I also like the dust collection and the hoods, very clever!

I've used the Collins fret buffer hundreds of times now and dust collection would be a welcome addition to ours.

Not sure what speed ours turns at but I'm sure Dave Collins can shed some light on that.  The wheels do generate some heat making the frets warm so it's likely important that too much heat is not generated in terms of rotational speed.  We don't want our glued in frets getting warm enough to compromise the glue joint.

We were talking about the cost of the wheels the other day and the old school method using various grits of quality sand paper.  We have a hunch that the wheels since we can amortize their use over several hundred fret dresses may not be any more expensive than quality sand paper.

There is also the issue that the old school method of going though various grits of paper takes time, takes me 20 minutes plus and contributes to my carpel bicep..... where the Collins Fret Buffer takes me perhaps 3 minutes start to finish.

As such we are believing that once you build the machine and those costs are "sunk costs" replacing wheels even as expensive as they are is likely no more pricey than quality sand paper multiplied by 300 fret dresses.  Add in the savings in time and the efficiencies are there.

What's most important, always, the results are superb and I'm interested to see what you think when you get it doing some billable work.

I usually do four back and forth passes (back and forth is one pass) on each of the first two wheels and then five back and forth passes on the less abrasive wheels.  Dave does it differently and is faster than I am.  Prior to going to the "wheels" as we call them I use 320 paper quad folded flossing the sides and tops of the frets and this gets any side scratches that the wheels may not have a good angle on.

Couple more tips for you if I may please.  Typically I tape off the first inch or so of the head stock in case I miss....:) and I use a shield around the fret board extension and/or a couple layers of masking tape.  Tape, if the wheels hit it, can gum up the wheels but you can dress that off the wheels with a sample piece if that happens.

I wear eye protection and a dust mask because there is some abrasive dust generated.

For bolt-on Fender style necks I remove the neck and that makes all of the fret work much easier including going to the wheels.

Don't quote me on this but so far I see little risk of the wheels grabbing any thing and ruining your day tossing an instrument on the floor as can easily happen with a conventional buffer.  That's a plus.....

Nice job David!

Thanks Mike.

The motors are 3600rpm. I would have rather used 1725 motors but needed the small housing size of these 6"  bench grinders. I normally wouldn't let anything labeled Ryobi into my shop but they're not challenged at all by the task and they were cheap. 

Thanks for the tips Hesh.  I'll use your routine as a starting point. I'll have to transition into these for a while before I can just let muscle memory take over. As always in repair," first do no harm!"

I'm guessing 3600rpm is quite a bit faster than the arbor set up I've seen in Dave's pictures,but it seems ok. Time will tell.

As you mentioned, the wheels are much less,"grabby" than conventional buffing wheels. One benefit of this set-up I didn't anticipate was having only one wheel spinning at a time. Less stressful than having an unused wheel threatening the headstock on the periphery of your vision.

Speaking of vision, the only benefit to getting old enough to need reading glasses is when I walk up to a power tool my safety glasses are already on!

Speaking of getting older, I have an MRI for my shoulder on Tuesday and a bunch of fretwork (for me anyway) in the pipeline. I bumped this project to the head of the line partly because of possible surgery.

The last fret job I did was on Strandberg 8 string w/24 fanned frets the size of re-bar. That's when I laid down my hammer (Lord Lord) and dug up Dave's old post.

Beast!

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