Fret Ye Not

I've just put the finishing touches to the fret slot cutting contraption. It is something that has evolved over the last few weeks so that the fboard can be slotted. I know you can buy them already slotted, but I wanted a zero fret, and a blank bit after the 22nd fret. Talk about fussy - no maple, no dots, weird fboard...









A took a trip to the local B&Q depot and got them to whizz their circular saw on some 3/4" MDF so that I had a thin piece with straight edges. This can move left and right without moving too much in any other direction. I was originally thinking of using a handsaw, but I had trouble in finding a blade thin enough - then I remembered the Dremel I used to savage Chewie's Ibanez fboard.



I took the centre strip to work and used a small milling machine to drill holes at 34" scale increments. I had a bit of help 'dialling' the piece in so it was straight along its length (Cheers Alan!). Then I got down to business.

The mill didn't have a digital readout, so I had to keep saying the measurements out loud so that I didn't forget where I was. The measurements were checked and another set of holes drilled to see if they fared any better. They seemed closer so I went with them.


More tweaking on the fixture and several dummy runs on scrap wood and it was ready to go! It looks a bit Heath-Robinson, but as long as I did't try and saw it all in one go it did the trick. One or two of the slots are a bit messy, and most of them have a slight curve at each end, but if I get big enough frets they will cover it up nicely!

You can see the locating peg in the last of the top row of holes. The bottom row was the first drilling attempt, so they are just for cooling now ;-) .

I still don't know what to do about position markers. I'm still trying to avoid dots.