2 new bar fret guits, sound file added

[whitespruce]

Well, I felt better than ever today, so spent about 6 hours in the shop. Dug around and sorted through a bunch of wood that folks are wanting (yes, I am on it, everybody), but mostly worked on guitars.

Finished sanding the fingerboard radius on the 2 necks and put in the position markers

Just MOP dots, nothing fancy

Then I polished up the phosphor bronze frets

I took a block, put on double sided tape, stuck on 2 frets, and rubbed the whole shebang on a sanding block. Then turned them over and did the other side. Took about a half hour and they ended up clean and perfect thickness

Then I cleaned up the fret slots on the neck

and lightly chamfered the edges of the slots with a triangular file

First 4 frets in

They fit snug enough so that they almost press in by hand. I give the bottoms a light bead of glue and tap them down tight with a smooth faced cobbler's hammer

All of the frets are in

Now, I try to have the fret slots the same depth and the fret blanks all the same width, since they bottom on the slots instead of the fret board surface like conventional frets. But, no matter how fussy you do it, they still always need a certain amount of leveling

So here they after about 15 minutes with file and sanding blocks

They are mostly leveled and about 0.062" above the fingerboard surface. I will take then down to just under 0.060" and clean up the ends and crown the tops and polish. A bit taller than most frets, but it gives a good feel and allows plenty for future dressing

One final task was to polish the beryllium copper frets

Got a start on them and will finish and install them next time I am in the shop

Tomorrow I have cardiac rehab in Brainerd, so I get to play on all of the fancy exercise machines and hang out with the nurses So I might not get back into the shop until Tuesday.

Stay tuned.

G

[timo]

👍. Very pretty. Much nicer than standard T-shaped wire. No need to bind a fretboard.

T

[RusRob]

Nice work Grant, Good to hear you are looking forward to rehab... or at least the nurses.

I bet those frets will look really great when they get all polished up. I am a bit surprised you didn't use copper for your fret markers, that would have given it a very distinctive look.

I am curious if that copper will turn green like regular old copper or does the heat treating stop that?

Cheers,
Bob

[Dennis Leahy]

I'm getting psyched to try a set!

My logic tells me that the mass of the frets is what is positively affecting the sound, and I just hope the phosphor bronze is wear-resistant enough (because it is so much cheaper than the beryllium copper.)

Lookin' great, Grant!

[whitespruce]

Bob, the beryllium copper is an alloy that should not corrode, and the phosphor bronze is the same as guitar strings. I suppose the pure copper on my original guitar could tarnish to green, but in 2 years, it has not.

Dennis, the cost is not really in the metal, it is the labor. I can get the beryllium copper already slit to width, the phosphor bronze, not. The BC comes at anneal temper and is easily snipped into fret lengths. Being spring tempered, the PB is somewhat difficult to saw into strips with a metal cutting blade on my bandsaw. And it heats up quite a bit and, I suspect, softens somewhat. The ease (read time saving) of working with the BC way more than offsets the extra cost. And I think it will outlast the PB many times over due to being much harder. Now, the only possible downside, which is still ahead, might be dressing those really hard frets But I am sure I will find something that will work. Right now it's "get 'er done", I will refine the process later.

And thanks for reminding me. I do need to weight these frets compared to conventional fret wire before I get too far into this (I do have a few extra PB frets, so I can do it. The BC, I will have to remember before I install them).

G

[RusRob]

Grant,
If you are planning on doing a few guitars with these frets you might think about having them cut on a water jet CNC machine. All it would take is to have an accurate drawing of each fret with the radius you need. They could cut an entire sheet of them out with one process. If you did a "run" of them the cost would dramatically be reduced over just doing one set. It would offset the cost of the bandsaw blade and your time. Plus they would come out exactly the shape you need.

Just an idea...

Cheers,
Bob

[timo]

Grant,
If you are planning on doing a few guitars with these frets you might think about having them cut on a water jet CNC machine. All it would take is to have an accurate drawing of each fret with the radius you need. They could cut an entire sheet of them out with one process. If you did a "run" of them the cost would dramatically be reduced over just doing one set. It would offset the cost of the bandsaw blade and your time. Plus they would come out exactly the shape you need.

Just an idea...

Cheers,
Bob

Damn if I could just find that f'ing box, still drives me crazy. Thanks for the chuckle Rusbob.

T

[whitespruce]

Bob, that would simplify doing the phosphor bronze frets, if I decide to go that route. As for the beryllium copper, I can get that already slit to width and fret lengths are easily snipped off. I have already made a jig to quickly radius the fret tops. So I don't think coming up with the drawings, whatever, and then finding somebody up here in the middle of nowhere to do the cutting will save me anything. But I will keep all of the options on the table, so thanks for the suggestion.

So, after I got home from rehab today (and after we stopped at Christy's Brother's place to do a couple of batches of laundry because our septic system froze up during the 11 days we were in Duluth) I went out to the shop and weighed frets. I was actually surprised at how heavy the bar frets were not. So I took a phosphor bronze fret and a beryllium copper fret of the same length, and cut equal lengths of Stew Mac #148 and #141 wire. Weighted all 4, subtraction 10% from the bar frets to allow for leveling.

Phosphor Bronze - 3.0 grams, or 60 grams for a 20 fret set
Beryllium Copper - 3.3 grams, or 66 grams for a 20 fret set (these are a tad taller than the PB)
Stew Mac #141 - 1.5 grams, or 30 grams for a 20 fret set
Stew Mac #148 - 1.1 grams, or 22 grams for a 20 fret set

So there is somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 times heavier for the bar frets. I have no idea what influence that will have.

G