Help with Ebony Flaking, S'il Vous PlaȊt.

[Robbie Collins]

I'm working on a 1976 LP Custom that once belonged to Capricorn Studios here in Macon. The frets were a mess and the neck had an S-bow. I pulled the frets using patience and a soldering iron and most came out fine but several slots flaked between the slot and the inlay:

Not a great photo, but you get the idea.

I filled these, filed, and sanded them level. I reglued the binding and then, for the first time, cleaned the slots using my Proxxon rotary tool. Worked great but created two new flakes, also from the slot to the inlay. I filled those and moved on to leveling the fingerboard.

Sanding the board created 5-6 new flakes, again from the slot to the inlay.  I filled, filed and sanded (BTW, I'm using Behlen Master Furniture Powder) then ran 220 over the fretboard to kiss the fills, created a few more flakes...and pulled out some of my previous fills.

I feel like Sysiphus in Hades, forever doomed to roll the rock up the hill, let it roll down, then roll it up again.

Do you guys have any pointers for finding closure here? I don't' know what to do but be gentle and persevere.

Thanks...Robbie

[Robbie Collins]

It does sound counter-intuitive, but I see where you're coming from. It's a bit like hardening slot sides. I'm going to try it next time I run into ebony with runout. Thanks!

[Robbie Collins]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I finally have laid this fret job to rest. A bone nut to go, but that's a piece of cake.

As it turned out, chamfering the slot edges prior to sanding helped as did sanding in one directions...except not how I thought. Most of the flakes were between the slot and the inlay so it helped to sand from the inlay to the slot. I did "harden" the slot edges on a few slots that kept breaking off.  It sure seems like I'm charging too little for a ebony neck with binding ;-)

This time I shaped the fret ends prior to installation. I scratched cutoff marks with an xacto and used a disc sander to grind them to length. Then I used a fret leveling file to take off the corners and put nicks in the places I'd usually hit with my cant file. After that, I did the same thing using sandpaper on a marble block.

One thing slowing me down is my fret nipper. Each time I notch the end it bends a small piece of the tang at a 90° angle. I then bend it straight and file the end. Is this common? I bought the fret nipper from Axemasters on eBay. The nippers slot doesn't seem deep enough or correctly placed so that tang is property leveraged. I haven't used the StewMac nippers but I'm hoping they don't also do this.

Here's the finished product:

[Robbie Collins]

Studying the guitar the next morning, I realized that several fret ends had popped up. I ended up refretting the guitar (and regluing another 20 flakes). So much for hemispherical frets. The rolled edges made it difficult to get them to lie flat upon the binding. I sure like the look and enjoyed the process. The 2nd fret job was also problematic. The frets just didn't want to stay down. I switched to a fretwire with a wider tang and put some serious crimps in them. I'm glad this is over.