The Luthier Community

whitespruce wrote:...I am thinking ahead to fret wire. Normal fret wire won't go well with this, so I am thinking about making them out of work hardened copper. Any other thoughts?

G

For a nylon strung guitar, I think copper might work, but even work-hardened copper sounds like it may be pretty soft compared to the steel and bronze or brass wrapped wires that will be pressing down into it on a steel string guitar. How about hard bronze?

If you contact Meade Metals they will want to sell you a huge sheet or a truckload, but you may be able to coax some sample material out of them if you turn on the charm. They have phosphor bronze at "full hard" and "spring temper" hardness. If you do something like the rectangular bar you used on the awesome Martin parlor copy, and if you want to round the frets, and if you don't have that tool (lots of "ands"), let me know as I have a fret re-crowning file in 2 widths.

After pounded or glued in, and dressed, you could chemically alter the metal frets to a patina, (deliberately "patchy" or uniform) and allow the strings to bite through it where they fall. Sculpt Nouveau has a variety of patinas available (green, brown, black)

Dennis

Brilliant! I was thinking those sides really needed some braces, but would be ugly with them visible through the cracks. Butterfly cleats hide it perfectly, and even improve the stability

How about some kind of stone for the frets? There's that "crystal frets" site that uses quartz. Maybe jade. Inlay hard maple bars where the frets go so they're isolated from the voids, and to make the color more visible. Or maybe agate, so it's opaque on its own, and you get nice 3D stripey pattens too?

Hey Dennis L, I hear you on the copper, but judging by tools make over 5,000 years ago out of native copper, and a few experiments, I can tell you that cold worked copper gets hard enough to have sharpened edges that rival iron blades. it gets so hard that you can't even bend thin blades without them breaking.

My plan is to make bar frets, but just for kicks today I tried drawing 10 gauge copper wire through hand made dies to form something similar to "real fretwire". I had to re-aneal it after every pass, it would harden up so fast. Two passes and it was as stiff as nickel-silver. So I think 4 or 5 passes through my rolling mill should be just fine. I was hoping to use 8 gauge copper, but all I can get is 6 gauge (10 is a tad too small), so it will need more rolling.

I looked at other metals online, but could not locate anything that would not require major milling and shaping. If that don't work, I will develop a Plan B.

Dennis K, That might constitute a consideration if Plan B materializes. Thanks for the suggestion.

G

WOW!

Jim

For the love of all things lutherie!! I step away from the forum for a couple weeks and all hell breaks loose! Grant goes crazy!!

I am absolutely enthralled with this guitar. As I read, I thought, those sides will never take the strain of gluing the back on. Then I see butterfly cleats.
This isnt just a guitar! It is an absolute piece of art.
I bow down to you!
David

gilmoreguitars wrote: Grant goes crazy!!
David

AGAIN

Well, thanks all for the kind words. I must confess that what I really am up to is to get folks stirred up and some things happening here Obviously it is starting to work....even Dennis is building a guitar Let's keep up the momentum

So, anyhow, I went into town this afternoon and bought some copper wire for the trial frets.

Here is what I had done prior to that using 10 gauge wire

The silver piece is neckel-silver bar fret from LMI. You can see that the 10 gauge made a smaller fret wire. As I mentioned, I think 8 gauge would come out just about right, but I will have to settle for 6 gauge. BTW, the little rolling mill is a leftover artifact from back in my wine barrel and brandy keg making days. I used it for rolling the hoop stock so it would fit the taper of the barrels. The barrels and kegs were for storing our, er......concoctions

So here is one length of wire done rolling and another one ready to roll

I started with 24" lengths of wire and they ended up 33" long after rolling. I had to hammer them partially so I could feed them into the roller and that hardened them enough that I had to anneal them before I could do the rolling. After rolling, I had to lightly hammer them with a small smooth-faced hammer to get them straight.

Then I gave them a light pass on each face through my thickness sander to even them out

Here they are with the piece of bar fret. They are oversize to that because I want them thicker(the bar fret is .056" thick and I need about .07" or so), and the extra width will allow for me to file the lower edge flat before instaling the frets.

I checked the hardness against the nickel-silver bar fret with a file and pushing on a center punch. They seem comparable, so we shall see.

G

Grant, this is a true inspiration. thanks for sharing!

really enjoying following this! copper frets are gonna look fantastic!!,its gonna be one hell of a special guitar, i challange anyone not to want to get out and build after taking a gander at this

Rob