Re-fretting a de-fretted fretless Warwick

[Andyjr1515]

A small job that @vmaxblues has been patiently waiting for, while I tinkered on the dark side with the ebony 6-string and Happy Jack's Lull necks.  The patiently awaited job was the refretting @vmaxblues defretted neck on his lovely Warwick.

 

The neck had, in the past, been de-fretted and the slots lined with maple veneer - a nice job, albeit with the evidence of the tang chips at the slot edges that are unavoidable when removing frets.  But well finished and sound.

 

The temptation with fretting a lined board is always to simply use the veneer as the saw markers.  The problem with a defretted-lined neck, however, is that the fret slot is usually a teeny bit wider than the veneer used to line it and so you can get slight inaccuracies - not a problem when used as a fretless, but important if it's going to return to a fretted state.

 

So out comes the Stewmac fret calculator, sharp-nosed punch and my long steel rule to mark the fret positions at the treble and bass sides:

 

 

Usually for a slotted fretboard, I would use my G&W Mitre Block - but that is only usable for unfitted boards.  For this one, I had to go back to old-school methods.  Using the end face of a radius block to keep the fretting saw blade vertical, I positioned the block and blade so that both punch dots disappeared under the blade width:

 

To check the depth, I frequently checked using a tool I use to clear dust from the fret slots, now marked with a thin pen line at a depth a smidgen deeper than the fret tang: 

     

 

 

After slotting all of the positions (and yes - some of the veneer strips were indeed a teeny bit out of line) I rechecked both bass and treble sides with the steel rule and fret calculator sheet. 

 

And then time for re-fretting.  @vmaxblues was happy to have my favourite fretwire - EVO Gold - which was cut to oversize length and detanged at each end.  The wire I use comes in a coil and so already has the all important radius.  Then - with a teeny line of wood glue along the tang - hammer one side, hammer the other, hammer the middle which, because of the radius, splays out the barbs on the tang underneath the fretboard surface and locks the frets in place.  I then clamp a radius block on the fret while I move onto the next:

 

 

And done, ready for levelling and recrowning:

 

I levelled the frets with my long levelling beam and then recrowned the flattened tops with progressively fine emery and micro-web wrapped round a crowning file:

 

 

Lastly, rounded the fret ends, filled the edge slots with epoxy mixed with wenge sanding dust and polished it all up:

 

 

 

And, at last, sent it back to him

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Andyjr1515

[vmaxblues]

And it is spectacular! A superb job, fixed back on the bass, intonation was a dream to set. Neck plays beautifully, it is such a tidy job, all fret edges are smooth, beautifully filled, all the heights are bang on.  When my beloved Ray needs the frets doing I know who I will be asking.

I will take some better shots, but in the meantime, see below.

[Andyjr1515]

Phew!  

[Thunderbird]

Good job nicely done 👍

[tvickey]

Wow, impressive!  Really nice work!

[vmaxblues]

It plays beautifully too

[warwickhunt]

Cracking job, your pics make it look easy... lots of bassists trooping off to ruin fretless necks.  LOL  By all accounts Wenge can be a bit of a bugga to work with but possibly worse when defretting as the timber can flake/splinter.