Fretboard Oil and Guitar Polish - Luthier's Finest

 

 FRETBOARD OIL

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I often get asked what oil to use on rosewood or ebony fretboards.
There are so many products out there. Over the years I've tried most of them with varying results. So after a lot of research and experimentation I've developed my own.
 I've combined different oils from around the world into what I believe is the best fretboard oil on the market.

 Oiling your board is important - if you never clean your guitar or your strings, never coil your guitar leads up neatly or check your intonation the chances are everything will be fine. If you don't oil a rosewood or ebony board the chances are it will absorb or loose moisture and bad things will happen.
 In damp conditions an un-oiled board will absorb moisture and this can result in back-bow and buzzing especially around the first few frets.
 In dry conditions your board will shrink, frets can lift, the board can crack. When it comes to re-fretting a dry board the wood can just crumble making it hard to re-seat new frets. This poor old Gibson es125 has a cry crumbly board - a big problem to re-fret.

 Oil seals your fretboard preventing moisture problems. Applying the oil cleans and preserves your board helping it look and feel great and making string bending and vibrato easier.
 I've been using this oil a little while now and my customers love it - that's why I've started selling it, popular demand.

When applying the oil only use a little, just moisten the wood. Be aware that if you drench it then some oil can seep under the frets and lift them. A little and often is better than going mad once a year - bit like exercise.

Here's a short vid to show you how:

 I suggest to players they oil their board and clean their guitar every time they change strings. More often would be better but realistically when you change strings is fine.

This is not for use on lacquered maple boards - use guitar polish for that.

 GUITAR POLISH

On the subject of guitar cleaning - I've also developed my own guitar polish. It contains no wax or silicone and leaves no residue, it's biodegradable and odorless. It is suitable for fine nitro-celulose finishes such as on Gibsons or shellac finishes as used on some handmade instruments. I advise using it with a microfiber cloth on most guitars to avoid scratching.
 It only takes a fine spray and a quick wipe to remove most marks. With some older guitars there's a build up of dirt that needs to be cleaned off first.


Both products are available from my workshop, Bungalow Bill's or  www.guitarstuff.co.nz  and soon to be in more guitar shops.
 They come in 125ml bottles - a bottle of each lasts me about 2 months in the workshop, they'd last you years.
  Cheers

      Glyn

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Feel free to contact me about repair work (if you are in NZ). I only check emails weekly so the workshop phone is always the best 09 307 6501.

Workshop Hours

Mon……. 8-6
Tues……. 8-6
Wed…….. Closed
Thurs …..8-6
Fri ……….8-6
Sat/Sun ..Closed

Mr Glyn’s Guitars

  21a Khyber Pass Road

Auckland

New Zealand

http://www.mrglyn.co.nz/

glyn@mrglyn.co.nz

www.facebook.com/MrGlynGuitars

www.mrglyn.blogspot.com

09 307 6501, 021 912678

Fret Stone - Fender Stratocaster

Frets wear.
Eventually they wear out and need replacing.
If the wear is not too deep the frets can be ground down to the lowest point of the wear, re-crowned, polished and the guitar is ready for a few more years playing before re-fretting.
This is called fret dressing, fret stoning or fret leveling - same thing.

One of the most important points to remember is the frets need to be level, if one is higher or lower than the rest there will be buzz in that area.
I cannot stress enough how important this is - you need the right tools and preferably plenty of experience to do this job well.
I'm not writing a 'how to' guide here, just showing what I do for those who are interested. I use this blog primarily to help explain to players what needs to be done to their instrument and keep my replies to email inquiries short.

This nice old '84 Strat came to me for a set up.

I always discuss the guitar with the player when he/she is in the workshop. It is so much easier to understand the problem and hear what they are hearing when we're together with the instrument.
This is why I don't do work for guitar shops, I don't feel I can do my job properly if I can't communicate with the player.
I get to meet a lot of interesting characters that way too.

A lot of the notes sounded 'dead'  especially on the first 3 strings and I could see there was a lot of fret wear.
The strings were sitting in large grooves and buzzing on the fret in front. These grooves were flat on the bottom giving the string an undefined area to vibrate off. With a well crowned, rounded fret the string has a positive 'point' to vibrate off and 'sings'.

  This guitar being a Fender I'm able to unbolt the neck. It makes the job a little easier if I attach it to a dummy body.

I mask off the fretboard to avoid any stray file scratches and to prevent the board getting gooed up with buffing soap later on.

On some maple (therefore lacquered) boards I'll use a low tack masking tape. A lot of 90's Fenders have problems with lacquer peeling off their necks and I don't want to pull any of the finish off when I remove the tape.
I use a marker pen on the frets so I can see the high and low spots .
 To do the leveling work I use a box section steel bar. One face has been machined flat using some pretty sophisticated machinery by an engineering company.
 I don't trust files to be flat and only use them for roughing off large amounts of fret if the wear is really bad.
 I use a thin double sided tape to attach 320grit wet or dry paper to my leveling block. The 320 scratches can be easily taken out later with finer grades before buffing.

I support the neck along its length to prevent any bending and grind the frets evenly to take the wear out. Most necks need some truss rod adjusting to minimize the amount of work needed.

I want to keep the neck straight between frets 1 and 12, remove the wear and have the upper frets falling away slightly.
This is where the experience comes in.
All necks are different so its not easy to explain - a certain amount of 'feel' is required. I'm trying to take the minimum of 'meat' off them but still getting rid of the wear.

When I'm happy with the stoning I need to crown. I mark the frets again with the marker pen and use a metal fretboard guard to protect the board from the file.

I use a triangular fine cut file from www.stewmac.com.

I need to take material from the sides of the fret without touching the top of the crown - a stray file stroke and one fret will be lower than the others. The marker pen helps me see how far I have left to go.
 This takes time.

Once the crowning is done I need to polish the frets up. I sand them with wet and dry paper being very careful to give each fret an even number of strokes with the paper. I go through 320, 400, 600 and 800 grades.
For the final polishing I use the buffing wheel.

It saves a lot of time and gives a great finish. A well crowned, shiny fret is a joy to play on - string bending and vibrato are effortless.
Then I carefully remove the masking tape, clean the fretboard (I prefer lighter fluid for this) and oil it.
The guitar is now ready to be set up. I've written about setting up before:

http://mrglyn.blogspot.com/2009/06/set-up.html

This guitar happens to be a Strat but the same procedure applies to all fretted instruments. If you play it - the frets will wear.

 Just a word of caution- if you don't have the right tools, not sure what you're doing or have no experience with guitar repair you can make quite a mess trying this at home.
I see quite a lot of roughly filed frets and scratched and dented fretboards - just thought I'd mention it  :-)


Cheers
   Glyn

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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

HofnerArchtop - neck problems

I see quite a few old Hofners, it's amazing how many are still around.
 It is, however, unusual to see one that had not had a neck break at some time in its life.

This one has not only had the typical break but it's been repaired badly. These pics show the typical Hofner break.

There are two large screws straight through the fretboard in an attempt to fix it. I've seen this before, it never works. I take then out and the neck falls off. But they leave rather ugly holes.

The underside of the neck shows a history of failed repairs.

There are two sets of bolt holes as well as the factory locating lugs.
 The heel looks even worse with two old screws snapped off in it.

Someone's put a lot of work put into this one.
This blog is about the repair to the fretboard - I'll deal with re-attaching the neck another time.
  First I remove the couple of frets either side of the damaged area.

Then with a sharp chisel remove the area between the frets.

I take it down about 3mm being extremely careful tp leave the binding. The binding is delicate, it's an old guitar and the plastic dries out and gets brittle.

I select a piece of rosewood with a similar colour and do my best to match the grain. It's not possible to get it exact but this one's pretty close.

It's important to cut it to the right size. It can't be so big that it pushes that old binding out and I must leave just the right gaps to seat the frets.
This grain looks good to me.

I use a couple of fret guards to ensure a fret slot gap either side of the fill and clamp it in using alaphatic resin to glue it in.

Here's the finished article. I just need to put the frets back. With oil and when the strings are on it should almost invisible.

It always seems a shame to have to fix someone elses blunders - right first time works for me.

Cheers
   Glyn

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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

Spotting a Fake Les Paul

One of my regular customers recently brought me a 'Les Paul Custom' to set up. It wasn't cheap (going rate) and I saw immediately it was a fake.
The hard part was breaking the news to him.
 So here are a few things to look out for, there are many more but these are the obvious, easy ones.

 
 On the fake the frets are placed over the top of the binding on the edge of the neck. Here are a couple more views.

 I've borrowed a real Les Paul Custom from Bungalow Bill's guitar shop (cheers bill) to show you how it should be  www.bungalowbills.com

The fret end butts up to  the binding and the binding has been shaped to cap the fret end.

The 'Gibson" logo is slightly too 'puffed up', a bit fatter than the real one. Look at the "i, b" and "o". The serial number ties in with a real one so don't be fooled by that.
 Here's the real logo.

   

I removed the truss rod cover to check the truss rod adjuster.

The adjuster is an allan key instead of a brass nut and the cavity is way too large. Here's the real one:

Finally I took the back cover off to take a look at the electrics. The cavity is the wrong shape, the pots are small Chinese ones, the wire coming from the pickups have coloured insulation, the capacitors are the cheap green ones and are wired up differently from the Gibson.

Here's the real one:

These are just some of the differences. If you're buying second hand ask to see these areas of the guitar. 

There are a lot of fakes around, someone's making a lot of money. 

There's a happy ending to this story - my customer contacted the seller who didn't know it was a fake and

gave him his money back. It doesn't always end this well.


UPDATE 27th Jan 2012

Just received a fake Les Paul for set up and they've changed the binding to look like the real thing.

This one was bought new as a Chinese fake. They haven't done as neat a job of the binding as Gibson but it's still convincing.
The truss rod, logo, electrics etc. were still obviously fake.

It's getting harder to spot them!

    Glyn

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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com