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Hi all , I am about to fret a new ebony fretboard , do you have any tips ? I know its prone to chipping during re-fretting .

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Mahe a little chamfer along the fret slots, that's all I can think of.

Hi len,

Main problems I have had with ebony boards (and we use a lot of them - mainly African - some old Madagascar units as well) is with standard 23 thou fret-slots being too tight and along with compressing the neck also  caused badly seated frets, sprung frets and frets that get squeezed out over time.   We bought in a couple of 25 thou circular saw blades and that solved practically all of our dramas with ebony.   I used to chamfer the edges as Pierre-Antonie offered and that helped a lot with the tight slots but the couple of thou extra has made all the difference in getting the initial part of the tang (before the cleats) to guide smoothly.

I use a standard 2 tonne press with the ubiquitous Stew mac brass radius cauls, a vacuum trammel to hold the boards flat and indexed (I fret the boards before gluing them to the neck)  and  also use medium viscosity CA to bed in the frets.

As I said Len, I had all sorts of drama with trying to get frets to seat in tight ebony slots - I'm on the road all day tomorrow (Tuesday) gis a call on 0411604320 if you wish and I 'll talk you through all my screwups and what other stuff we know now about ebony boards.

C'ya, Rusty.

Thanks guys , I will try to get back to you soon Rusty , once I measure the slots and frets.Its an LMI board.

Thanks Tom , that's what I did and later I ran some thin CA glue under the ends , worked well.

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