Tonight I decided to start to level and dress the frets on the neck. I started by adjusting the truss rod to remove the slight bow in the neck. Next I used double sided tape to stick 240 grit sandpaper to an old aluminium spirit level.
Next I drew a line on the top of each fret with a red marker, this gave me a visual indication of where I was removing material.
It looks like the first fret is quite high compared to the rest up to the 18th fret where the last couple of frets also stand higher than the rest of the frets.
I have to keep the spirit level running parallel up and down the neck as I was to preserve the profile of the frets to follow the profile of the fingerboard.
It's quite obvious above as to where the bulk of the material is been removed. I stop periodically to hoover up the debris and remark the frets with the red pen.
Gradually more material is removed as I keep steadily sanding up and down the neck. I'm in no rush and keep the strokes even and parallel moving across the neck after a couple of strokes.
After I have hit the top of every fret I move to my smaller radius block with 800 grit sand paper to even out the profile of the frets. I then hoovered up the mess and started dressing the frets.
I took a triangular file and used my grinder to smooth one edge of the file. I then protected the fingerboard with some masking tape and start returning the thin profile to the top of the frets. It is a slow job without a proper set of fret files but they are just too expensive so I will have to stick to the triangular file for now.
I have started work on the last 4 frets, the difference is easy to spot. I will continue tomorrow as it is well past midnight here and I have work in the morning!
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