What is the best way to shine-up frets, fine steel wool, or fine sand paper?

[Arthur Sweeney]

Hello again all.

I have a Fender Squier Telecaster with medium jumbo frets.

The frets are in great shape, plenty of meat left on them, but

they are tarnished a bit. I want to bring the shine back to them.

What is the best way, 000-steel wool, or super-fine grit sandpaper?

Thank you.

 

[Arthur Sweeney]

actually, meant to say 0000-steel wool, that is the finest they make

 

[William F.Eden]

Yes use the extra fine steel wool.

[harrison phipps]

The oil free 0000 works well.  For a spectacular look you can use a 1 inch Dremel soft polishing wheel, with its outer edge shaped into a curve to polish the frets with a metal polish such as Wenol.  The fingerboard needs to be taped off to protect the wood from the light colored metal polish.  On lacquered fingerboards, the high speed polishing wheel can generate enough heat to cause damage, so be careful.  I have also got good results by just hitting the frets with a 10 inch diameter car buffing wheel with no polish. On new guitars and refrets, after crowing the frets, smoothing with sandpaper down the grits from 320 to 2000, vigorous rubbing with 0000 wool, polishing with metal polish applied by a Dremel, the only thing shinier that the frets is the gleam in the customer's eye.

[Russell Vance]

Micromesh sticks, the ones with 3 grades on the one stick are a very good way to finish frets - 0000 steel wool also works very well for final touchups.  Also very hard to mess up using these things.

The really keen dudes, as Harrison details, use mini buff pads and polishing wheels and jewelers pastes or metal polishes. Be careful tho- the residues from these polishes can be a bad look after time and the soft wheels can do damage to adjacent fingerboard surfaces if they get away. 

It's also common for production shops to tape off the board and use a dedicated buff wheel and various polish compounds - this works best of all and is, on balance and in my experience, the most cost/time effective way of finishing frets to a consistent high polish.

[Kerry Krishna]

Here is a shot of the fast mask that a lot of folks use for this. It is two tape thicknesses and will usually last a whole fretboard...

[Russell Vance]

Yep, that works for me as well, alternatively,  you can use stainless steel  fret shields which are availble in packs of 6 for a couple of bucks and last forever (Stewmac and just about everywhere else) , they also prevent lifting of lacquered finishes on Fender maple necks - which masking tape will lift just dandy particularly with the heat and pressure applied to the masking tape by the steel wool going back and forth.  Rusty.

[Arthur Sweeney]

All done! I used 0000-steel wool, and protected the fret-board with that blue

painter's tape, the easy-release stuff. The frets are nice and shiny now, and

with new strings on it, my Squier Tele is like new. Thanks again to all.

 

 

[Tom Mitchell]

Everyone who has posted here has developed thier own nuanced approach, and all are excellent.  I appreciate what everyone has shared, because it's giving me a reason to rethink and adapt the way I've been doing my fret polishing.

I suppose if I could add anything of value to this thread, I'd share that when I'm in the "sanpaper stage" of this process, I use a rubber sanding block because it has just enough "give" when downward pressure is applied to sand over the contours of the frets.

Steel wool is a bit messy.  To clean up, I put a magnet in a zip-top sandwich baggie, and drag it around the work area to get the stray particles.  Then I head over to the trash can, turn the baggie inside-out, and then pull the magnet away.  All the iron filings are contained within the baggie and ready to be disposed of with practically no mess.

I like Kerry's disposable fret guards!  I may try that.  Years ago, I discovered that a few of the cutouts on one my stainless steel eraser guards (from the days that I did my drafting by hand) fit nicely over guitar frets, and I've been using it as a fret guard ever since.

[Mark McLean]

That magnet in the bag trick should be included in the annals of genius and simplicity.  Thanks Tom - I hadn't heard it before.

Mark

[John]

I use the Lee Valley honing compound with a bullet shaped felt in my Dremel tool for final polishing. The magnet/baggie trick is good. A word of caution a strong magnet can demagnetize a pick up. 

The good steel wool (usually comes on a roll) doesn't break up like the Bulldog stuff does.