and now its on to the Fingerboard

For me there is a real sense of satisfaction with the box closed in. Its sort of like with my electrics when you have all the electronics wired and closed in and the knobs and switches are in place. But there is still a lot of work to be done. My next step is to start on the fretboard. Some guitars have a solid neck fretboard included. Some guitars have a fretboard made out a different material from the rest of the neck. My favorite electrics have a one piece maple neck. I have two with Rosewood fret boards laminated on to one piece maple and I don't like them so much. The back of the neck - the maple part - is fine but for me the fret board is slow, not that I have fast hands, its subtle but I can feel it. My acoustic, however has a laminated rosewood fret board and I love it. Almost all fretboards have some curve to them. My electrics have the tightest radius you can get, 7.25. I have small hands and that works for me. My acoustic is much flatter, 12 I think. which is good for flat picking and fingerpicking. So this build has a laminated ebony fretboard with a 12 radius.

The first step is to install the fret wire on the fret board. First I re-jiggered my workstation a little. For this part of the build you need a solid surface to nail on so there is no deflection or bounce when you hit it with a hammer. I simply turned my sawhorses 90 degrees so I would be nailing directly on to the cross piece of the horse. I also got out every tool I thought I might need - framing hammer, tack hammer and a cheepo that I got at a flea market for $2 this summer that has a plastic head and a hard rubber head. I was thinking about nailing frets when I boiught it. I also got out lineman pliers, wire cutters and wire nips not knowing what would work best to cut the wire. And I got a stool that would allow me to sit up high over the work so I could really whack down with the hammer. Here's  my set up:

and a closer view of the tools.

Since Ken's kit provides you with a pre-shaped, pre-slotted fret board, step one for me was to cut the fret wire into workable lengths. You want to cut the wire longer than the slots but I needed to be careful as I had a fixed lenght of wire and had to make sure I left enough for every slot. To keep track of the wires I set them into a length of corrugate that is taped on the bottom and held verticle with a small clamp. You may notice on the picture that the slots are numbered. I cam up with this idea when I was wiring effects pedals and needed to keep track of the resistors. As I sort through them they get slotted into the corrugate slot that correspondes to the reisistor number on the ICD. But back to the frets...

I got everything clamped up good and tight and started wailing. I started with the cheepo hammer using the solid plastic head and it worked so well I never changed. After two or three I got the technique down and it went really quickly;

a closer look with the frets hammered in:

Next step secure the frets and cut them to length. I started to make a clamping caul that Ken suggests. You take two 1/8" threaded rods. Cut them to length

and epoxy them to a scrap of wood (MDF, whatever) that is the same size as the fret board. Hey, look, I found another use for the clothespins. 

to be continued