Fretting help

Diarmsquid

Hey,

I'm in 6th year in school and I'm making a an electric guitar for my Leaving Cert Construction project. I've got to the fretting stage and had a guy in town to do it for me, but I rang him yesterday to maybe do it over the midterm and he told me that he won't be able to do it at all.
This has kinda left me in a bit of a situation. From what I've read, I'm sure I'd be able to do the job myself, but I dunno if I'd do it very well. And it's alright to get professional help on parts of my project.

So what I'm asking is if anyone here knows anyone who has done the fretting on a guitar before, and who I could bring my guitar to and have them help me?
I'm really desperate, although technically it doesn't have to be finished untill April, we were given a deadline by our teacher for last May, and I really wanna get this guitar out of the way as soon as possible for study and all that.

Thanks.

Dord

Derrick Nelson.

You might have to wait a few weeks as he's very busy. His contact details are in the sticky.

Diarmsquid

I should mention that I ordered a pre-slotted fretboard from StewMac, so I'll I need to do is put the fretwire in.

Can anyone tell me if this is hard or if they've done it before?

Voodu Child

You'll certainly do it yourself if you want. It all depends how playable the end result needs to be - if it was for a real guitar, the frets would want to be levelled, crowned and polished. This can be pretty tricky to do a good job.

I wouldnt know if an examiner would be looking for those kind of things. If he wasnt, you'd certainly fret it yourself and someone who didnt play guitar wouldnt know the difference.

segovia

hi
Ive done fretting on a couple of guitars ive made and with a stewmac pre-slotted board its easy. ok if the board has a radius you need to bend the fret wire into a nice smoth radius a little bit smaller than the board. you can cut the wire slightly over sized with a cable snips,tap ( or beat ) them in with a malet then file them off to meet the board. you then file all them off to a 35* angle along the board.you then need to dress the end of each fret without damaging the fret board, to do this put a stanly blade against the fret and file half of the the fret end and put the blade against the other side of the fret and do the same,good luck

Johnny Storm

Plenty of stuff on the interweb about how to do it, such as:-
http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/Fretting.htm

Diarmsquid

Thanks.
I think I'm going to give it a shot by myself. I have a book called "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" and there's a nice detailed chapter on fretting in it.
Thanks for the help. I'll let ya know how it goes.