Installing new BIG frets.

[Michael S. Fields]

After replacing the inlays, I've finally started the refret on my 1978 Custom with Jescar FW57110. I must be doing something wrong, because after the first eleven frets, I can put my fret rocker anywhere on the new frets and it doesn't move in the slightest. :)

Mike Fields

[steven gallagher]

Does your fret rocker span more than two frets?

[Michael S. Fields]

Of course.

Mike Fields

[Andrew]

I cant stop giggling.

Edit: you did put the remaining frets in before the rocker test, I hope.

Nyuck nyuck nyuck

[Michael S. Fields]

Yep.

Mike Fields

[Andrew]

Btw, your work is looking pretty good. A (very brief) review of your previous posts on this guitar would suggest youre moving along on it pretty well.

[Hesh Breakstone]

Looks great Michael!

The fret rocker is not a good tool though for determining how level your fret plane, as a whole as the strings see it, is.

[Andrew]

Learned (learning?) that one the hard way myself, but it can be somewhat useful for the novice as a quick check to see if youre seating the frets evenly as you work up the board - so long as one doesnt presume that dead level frets are an indicator of a slick fret job as a whole.

[Mike Kolb]

Most of my fret rocker use, these days, is limited to checking an initial refret job. Generally I'll press or tap frets in with a thin bead of titebond on the tang.

Right after pressing (or sometimes hammering) the frets, I'll go over them with a fret rocker just to catch any high areas then take a small deadblow hammer to the offender before the glue sets. 

[Ned Knepp]

I don't have a fret rocker but ,working with what I got, I use a short machinist ruler the same way.   

I use a long high quality steel ruler to check the total length. I'm working on making a flat aluminum stick/block for truing  the frets but I don't have a lot of patience with lapping things like this. The U channel I started with wasn't all that flat and it didn't seem to want to move that direction until I finally just took a hand plane to it. Now it's coming along but I STILL don't have much patience with moving a strip of metal over "grit". 

[Andrew]

Ive played the lapping game several times. Id probably just go for stew mac's sanding beams if you can spare the dough. Id only do it with something I absolutely needed to (certain tools I cant find). In this case, the beams will save you time and probably frustration. But youve read that around here already I bet :P. Sometimes making your own is more fun, though.

[Hesh Breakstone]

Murray who is a member here offers excellent leveling beams under his company name, Technofret on eBay.  They are less expensive than the Stew-Mac offering and super flat.

We offer fretting classes and tried out Murray's beams for our students which so far has been four sets of the long and short beams.  We checked them on our calibrated surface plate and they were as flat as can be.  We saw less than .0005" variance over the 18" span and that's excellent!

We used to make our own and I would spend three days lapping my arse off at the surface plate.  Never again, Murray's leveling beams are excellent and at his great price they will save us money over the lost productivity that lapping my own represents.

[steven gallagher]

Hesh,

The Technofret 19" leveling beam on EBay doesn't appear to be U-channel, i.e. usable with the strings on. The picture shows it with the strings off and there is no side view.  :-(

I've read Murray's posts here and he advocates leveling with the strings on, so I'm a little puzzled.