early t fret?

[Lee Gendvilas]

Just wondering if this is an early t fret. It came off of the mandolin shown in the pic.

[Frank Ford]

Yep, old "T" fret.  The first frets with the barbs we all know and love were patented and produced in the late 1920s by Horton-Angell.

Older T frets had no raised barbs, but had notches rolled into the bottom edge, or whacked in one at a time like your sample.  I just referred a one-year-old Greek bouzouki that had normal modern width T- frets with no barbs at all on the tangs.

[Lee Gendvilas]

Thank-you for replying! I am not sure how to proceed on this mandolin (see pic). The bottom of the fret slot is .020 and gets wider toward the top of the fret slot. The owner of the mandolin wants current style t frets. The board is very dry and there is the issue of the cracks. Should I plug and re-cut the slots and use frets with the barbs or should I modify the slots and use frets without the barbs and glue?

[onewent]

Lee .. my experience with these super-dry fingerboards from that era is that they are prone to disintegrating when pulling frets .. there's so much chip out it and breaking of wood that a fretboard replacement is necessary.

However, if the removal does not cause a major blow up, either of our solutions should work, with the second option being most time efficient.  Tom

[Frank Ford]

One good remedy for those old dried out boards is to saturate the slots with thin cyanoacrylate - it wicks into the spongy and damaged wood to form a solid matrix.  Check out this bit:

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier/Technique/Frets/FretTrouble...

[Lee Gendvilas]

Hello again. Thanks for the link! I was able to pretty much save the fretboard but, I guess I missed glueing a small part of the board and a piece fell off and disappeared into the floor. I would like to make a replacement. I have searched the net to see what type of wood was used and the best I found was it was either dyed maple or pearwood. As I am not that experienced in identifying woods yet, to my eye it's not rosewood or mahagony  or ebony. Dyed pearwood? Looking forward to your thoughts. 

[Lee Gendvilas]

Well, the floor gave up the missing piece and it's back on the fingerboard! Still need to figure out what kind of wood it is as I have a crack running parallel with the binding that can't be filled with wood dust and cyano.

Happy Tuesday!

[Ned Knepp]

It's a personal opinion, Lee, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. In fact, I'd probably replace it with one of the ebony boards I have in my stock rather than worry about the exact species. If I thought using a "white" wood rather than one that is already dark,I would probably go with maple just because it's easier for me to get. The bottom line is that I don't think matching the original species is going to make much if any difference in the value.

Again, it a personal opinion but I don't much like the pearwood fingerboards anyway. It seems like everyone I come across tend to be cupped over their length and I feel that they are too soft to hold fret wire well