I took the plunge into fretwork today!
The Firebird I acquired a little while ago had pretty bad fret sprout; I tried sealing it in a plastic bag with a damp sponge for several days, but that helped only a little.
I had a StewMac gift certificate, so I got myself a
Rough Fret Smooth & Shine Kit, and from Greschler's I picked up
a good 8" flat file.
And then I watched a ton of videos and read a ton of forums and articles.
Today I finally had a long unbroken stretch of free time, so I carefully put file(s) to frets.
And you know what? It actually wasn't hard at all. I'm not going to say I did a
masterful job, but the frets are about a million times better than they were before, and I put not a single nick or scratch in the guitar. I started by carefully taping off the treble side of the neck, and then delicately filing the frets back flush with the flat file, then I adjusted the bevel with the flat file, then took the dressing file and fixed up the ends. Then I used the Micro-mesh pads and polished the ends, then I took the touch up stick and polished the whole frets (in retrospect, I probably should have used those tools the other way around, but whatever, it worked), and then for a finale I even polished the fingerboard itself.
Observations: probably the best piece of advice I saw anywhere was "Approach it as a Zen exercise." It probably helps that I like doing repetitive mechanical tasks where you can see results as you go. Having plenty of time and not rushing was critical. After all, you can always file
more, but it's really hard to
unfile something you went too far on. Also, having good tools makes a huge difference. If you have a reasonably large flat file that rides on multiple frets at once, it's almost hard to see how you could damage the edge of the fingerboard - it's pretty easy to tell if the file is riding on metal or wood from sound and feel, and you can stop every couple of passes to feel how things are going. The fret end dressing file also makes it hard to damage the fingerboard if you're at all careful, since it's got a flat smooth side and a flat slightly rounded side, either of which you can use to face in to the fingerboard. When I did the bass side of the frets, I didn't even bother taping anything, that's how safe I felt by that point. Also, you're taking off what, 1/32" of an inch at most of metal? I felt like the tape could actually start to get in the way. And if you do make a scratch, the micro-mesh pads go from 1500 to 12000, so unless you make a big gouge, I think you're pretty safe in your ability to polish it out.
Now I'm just wishing I'd learned about this decades ago, because damn these frets feel nice.
and secondly because I might end up replacing the neck at some point anyway.
