March 06, 2025

PDF Re Fretting Course

Note: Any links in this PDF will generally lead to the easiest and most accessible form of tools required here, but do remember that you can purchase some of these at a lower cost via eBay or other alternative sources, if you have questions, just post them in the Masterclass Community page.

Fret removal and fingerboard prep:
Tools:
Remove strings and flatten neck/truss rod, make sure to remove the nut of the instrument before beginning the refretting process. Using your fret pullers first remove the last fret of the instrument, being careful not to “pull” upward to remove the fret but instead gently wiggling the flat edge of the fret pullers underneath and gently walking your pliers along the length of the fret, while squeezing the fret pullers to gentle “lift” the frets out of the fingerboard.
Start at the edge of the fret, not the middle, and work the frets out slowly.
If your frets seem to be glued in then use a soldering iron and solder to melt/evaporate the glue and attempt this while the fret is still hot as the wood fibres in the fret slots will open up and expand to assist in removing the fret. Make sure to use a small fan or do this in an open area as super glue (if that’s been used) will turn into a vapour that isn’t healthy for you to breath in.

If your fingerboard is painted (for example glossy maple) then use a sharp blade or scalpel to lance/slice through the lacquer that is sprayed on the board/base of the fret and then attempt the steps mentioned above.

Fingerboard radius and preparation:
Tools:
(Clickable Links) You may need: Fingerboard radius blocks - Sandpaper - Double sided tape - Fret slotting saw - Straight edge

Most instruments will have an accurate radius that will need minimal work to refine, the trick here is to get the preparation perfect, so that your time spent fret dressing and correcting high and low spots is minimised by fretting the instrument as accurately as possible, this can be the difference between an hour long fret dress, or one that takes 4-8 hours.

Process: With the frets now removed its time to prep the surface. If you have any chip outs that need repairing on rosewood/ebony don’t panic, please just post in the group and I can walk you through this process as this is a little more advanced.

Double check with a straight edge that your neck is dead flat, concentrating on the area between frets 5-12 as this is where the truss rod is most active, some necks may have a slight hump at the 3rd fret as truss rod tension in this area will create a small rock when checking the neck, but this is generally considered normal, again just reach out if you are confused. You may also find you have “fallaway” beginning from the 15th fret until the end of the fingerboard, this is something some manufacturers do in order to reduce the amount of fret buzz or string contact on the upper register of the fingerboard.

Check your radius with a radius gauge and select the appropriate radius block, then place a strip of sand paper roughly 30mm wide on the block and cut this just shy of the front and back edges of the block.

Be sure to position yourself sideways so that you can apply even pressure along the board when performing the re radius (the entire neck should be supported during this process, with sand bags or shot bags)

Periodically check your radius with a radius gauge, and the neck with a straight edge, to ensure the neck remains straight and the radius true. When changing a radius keep in mind your areas of focus, if going from a flat radius to a more curved one, you will need to have more passes on the treble and bass sides of the neck than you will the centre (count your passes so everything is even, 4-6 passes on the sides, 2-4 passes in the middle while sanding)
And for the reverse such as flattening a radius from say a 10’ to a 12’, you will need to focus more in the middle of the fretboard to bring this part of the radius down/flatter.

Things to note: Be careful when taking lots of material off of the fingerboard, if you go too far you will need to deepen your fret slots, and this is a little more advanced so please post in the page if you need help with it and we can direct you, it’s a good idea to check the depths of your fret slots with either a skinny ruler or a fret slot depth gauge, and then check the tang of your fretwork to ensure you have enough room, if you don’t, your fret won’t seat at all and you’ll have to remove it and try again.


Fret Vs Fretboard Radius:
For nickel silver Your fret wire radius should be roughly 2 inches smaller than your fingerboard radius or ‘over radiused’ - For example if your fingerboard radius is 12” then your fret wire radius should be 10” - If your fretboard radius is 16”, then your fret wire radius should be around 14” - you can use a fingerboard radius gauge to check this so that when you seat the fret, the fret tang barbs spread out into the fingerboard and hold solid. If your frets are too heavily rounded you will run the risk of the centre of the fret not seating and causing ‘spring back’ which is where the centre of the fret pops back up, this is especially common with stainless.

For Stainless Steel:
For stainless Steel fret wire the above still applies, however the frets should be over radiuses by roughly 1” rather than two, much more and the risk of spring back is much more common simply due to the extra tension stainless steel holds when pressed into a fingerboard.

Notes: These factors will also be determined by how tight or damaged your fret slots are, smaller width fret slots will hold frets tighter, larger ones not so much, but on the other hand fret slots that are ‘too’ tight will cause you to apply excess compression into the fretboard and this can force a back bow into your neck, sometimes this is actually needed and this is a technique called “Tension” or “Compression” Fretting which is performed on some instrument that do not have a truss rod (think vintage acoustics) in order to force back bow into the neck to allow for heavier string gauges to be used, or if the neck has some permanent forward bow/relief.
This knowledge comes with time, the more fretboards you work with the more you will be able to judge if you need to radius your fret wire a little more or a little less, or if your fret slots are too tight or too loose.
Again, we are here to help with any questions you might have about this in the Masterclass Community Page.



Fret seating method:
Remember that when striking your fret with your hammer to just tap the edges in first so you can begin seating the fret, we usually use the nylon end of the hammer to do this as its a little more gentle and you don’t risk pressing the fret in too far initially.
When we’re seating the fret its important to note that we don’t want to seat just one part of the fret and then send the rest of it home, you want to slowly ‘walk’ the fret into the slot, and we do this by dividing the fret into 3 regions to strike, the first strike should be from the bass side, just inside the fingerboard playing surface, the second, should be just before the centre of the fingerboard, and the third should be just past the half way mark of the fret, and then you repeat the process on the other side, so your strikes are essentially overlapping, and gently working the fret down towards the fingerboard surface all at once.

If you seat the edges first you risk them popping back up when you seat the middle of the fret due to the tension in the radius in fret wire

Installing fret wire:
Tools:
Start by cutting your first fret, and starting from the heel of the instrument, that way if you cut one too short you can simply move it down to the next position, this is useful especially if you are undercutting the fret in order to install it into a neck with binding or undercut tangs.

When cutting your fret (for tangs that run through) cut the fret with 3-4mm of overhang, this is helpful if you have a fingerboard with heavy roll off on the edges so that you can tap the overhang when the frets are glued and gently ‘bend’ the fret wire over the rolled off part of the board, which will give you a nicer and sharper finish on the fret edges.

Install your first 3 frets, then use your fret rocker to check your seating (the rocker is used over 3 frets only, if your fret rocker rocks, then your middle fret is high, you can also use some thin paper to slide along side the fret and if it slips under the crown you know the fret isn’t seated correctly.
If you find a rock, gently tap the high fret back down, if you don’t find a rock, try not to assume the fret level is perfect, as your most recent fret may potentially be high, causing a misread on the middle fret, so just move on to the next.
Continue this process, and be sure to backtrack as you go, because this will slowly remove inconsistencies in the over all fret level. If you go ahead and install all of the frets, the vibration from seating them, may further knock them loose, and once you go back and check you will find you’ll get frustrated with the amount of rocking and back tracking you will have to do all at once, and it may just get frustrating, take your time and do the one fret/rock method slowly, believe me, I have tried to just hammer all of my frets in and hope for the best, and this creates a great deal of unnecessary work once the frets are in.

Once all of your frets are in, go back to the first ones at the heel and slowly check back over them, rocking each fret and gently tapping down any that are lifted, don’t be worried if you don’t get them all perfect, there is a small tolerance you’re able to work with as your fret dress will level them all out, however you still want to make sure the fret is at least seated on the fingerboard, and there are no major rocks in your frets as the smaller the rocks the easier and faster your fret dress will ultimately be.

Glueing:
Tools:
Once the frets are installed you will want to glue them in.

We used to use titebond or hide glue. These days I just use Cyanacrilite (fancy name for super glue) as I don’t want to “glue” the fret in, I want to harden the endgrain around the fret barbs. Wood glues can let go and become malleable again as heat will soften most wood glue, especially Hide Glue.

You will need some extra thin super glue, we use Zap Super Glue which can be purchased from hobby shops or Carbatec.
For fender style fretboards you will mostly likely have some space underneath the fret that you can place two drops of glue into, you will more than likely want to use a whip tip for this, or you can run a drop of glue onto a wound guitar string and accurately drip the glue into the space underneath the fret tang, this super glue is so thin that it will run through the slot. Turn the guitar over and proceed to do the same on the other side of the fingerboard.
If you don’t have frets that run through the entire fretboard surface, such as a bound instruments or undercut “blind” frets then you’ll need to run a bead of super glue along the side of the fret/along the fretboard surface. One trick you can do is apply some Harrons Board Sauce, or similar oil to the fingerboard and wipe it off, as super glue will ‘wick’ down into the fret slot and you’ll be left with minimal clean up.

Give the glue 10-20 minutes to harden and you can then proceed with cutting off the fret excess and move on to the bevelling stage.





Fret end bevelling:
Tools:
Now that your frets are correctly installed and glued in, we can begin refining the playing surface.

Take your fret cutters, and nip off the overhang of the frets.
If your frets are NOT undercut and your tang rungs through the entire fingerboard, then hold your cutters so the cutting surface is runs in line with the tang (up and down), and tilt the cutters on a slight angle so that you’re already establishing a little bit of a bevel and you’ll have less work to do later.

If your frets are undercut then you will need to place the pliers inline with the crown (left to right) and you can establish the same tilt so that you are doing less file work when bevelling, this is a big time saver!

Once your frets are cut you can begin bevelling. Hold your neck/guitar on the side and secure it to a vice if you have a bolt on and a plant to bolt it to, or you can secure your set/through neck, on your bench on a sand bag or yoga block and tuck the instrument under your arm to help secure it.

Determine your angle, being mindful of of where you will want your string spacing to sit along side the edge of the frets, a bevel at around 30-35 degrees is the most common, and if you want more you can simply more afterwards, where as you can’t put fret material back if you go too far.

Continue at this angle under all the frets are flush to the edge of the fingerboard, keeping in mind we haven’t filed away the tangs just yet, once your frets are flush you can change the angle of the file so that it sits perfectly flat on the edge of your fingerboard, and you can now remove the tang that is sticking out from the edge of the board.

Us your fingers to feel for sharp edges, but rather than running them along the length of the fingerboard (because all you will feel is sharp burs from the bevelling process) you should be feeling for a smooth transition from tang, to fingerboard and fret, you are essentially rubbing your thumb/finger up along the underside of the fret crown where its meeting the fingerboard.

If your fret ends look a little squashed and don’t have a nice mushroom head shape on the edge of the crown you can pick these parts out with a razor blade, as all this is, is metal being squished into the fingerboard edge, and is usually caused by applying too much pressure or your bevelling file not cutting fast enough, so be sure to clean your files regularly with a brass bristled brush of file cleaner.

Now you’re done! And we can move on to de burring and crowning the fret edges.
Crowning Fret Edges & Technique:
Tools: Fret end dressing file or Fret Dressing File
The main thing to remember here is that we are choosing an angle and sticking with it, try not to perform this task and “roll” over the entire fret edge, we are simply removing the burr from bevelling and trying to create a nice uniform fret edge shape that feels smooth to the touch.

Starting with your 3 corner file, start on either the left or right side of your TREBLE edge of the fretboard, don’t try and bevel the frets closest to you in an “upwards” motion because if your file catches a fret edge you might lift it out of the fingerboard.

Rest your left arm on the neck, anchoring yourself to the working surface, and hold the tip of the file in between your thumb, middle and pointer fingers of your left hand, this will give you control with each stroke of the file, tuck the handle of the file inside the ball of the your palm, and your pointer finger on the file as this will do the same.

Try to use the entire face of the file with each stroke so you’re removing an equal amount of material with each pass. Your angle should be 35-45 degrees and when passing the fret edge you are “rolling” the file up to the peak of the fret crown (so only working on each side of the bevelled fret at a time) and then repeating the process on the other side.

Once this is done 3-6 times each side (depending on the aggressiveness of your file or whether you are working with stainless) you should be left with a nice smooth fret edge, and you can begin the sanding and buffing process but using 600-1200 to remove any scratches and marks your file has left.




Fret Dressing/levelling
Tools:
Fret levelling bar or Snap On Attachment

Now that our frets are in and our edges bevelled we can begin the fret dressing and crowning process.

First we need to make sure our neck is again dead flat, different fret tang widths can add compression into a fingerboard which will make it back bow slightly, so check its straight again, and use the frets as your reference as they should have gone in straight and level when you installed them.

Once your neck is flat take a marker and draw a line down each fret so you have a reference as to where you file is contacting and where it is not. Then you’re going to take your fret levelling file and just like performing a re radius, choose your line, and push the file down the fingerboard with not much more force/weight than that of your hand. Follow this process down the neck starting from the heel, and making sure you also pass the first and last fret by at least 50% total length of the file, so that the material removed from these areas is the same as the rest of the frets.

Once you’ve completed your first pass from the bass side all the way to the treble side you can check where you file has made contact. You want to continue this process until there is a mark on the top of each of the frets, and if you have taken equal and consistent passes then all of your frets should be nice and level. Feel free to check this with your fret rocker also.



Fret re crowning and polishing
Tools:
Fret dressing 3 corner file or Z file
Sandpaper grits 1200 & 2000
Fingernail Buffer. Diaso or equivalent

Now for the final step in your fretwork journey, re crowning.
This part is all technique and experience, the longer you use a 3 corner file the better you will get at it, and the better your results in the end.

Anchor your left on the board, as we are starting at the heel again, we do this because the frets are closer together and also longer at this end of the fingerboard, so by the time you get down to fret 12, this task feels like it is going faster..

Your left (or right if you’re a lefty) hand should be holding the tip of the file as this will give you some extra stability, and you file handle should be tucked just inside of your right palm.
The motion here is pretty simple, but it’s getting it fluid and consistent which is the hard part. Start with the file leaning right up against the left side/edge of the fret, holding the cutting face at a 90 degree angle to the fret, and you’re going to “push” the files cutting edge all the way across the face of the fret, you’re doing this a few times before you begin to “roll” the cutting face of the file up the “shoulder” of the fret. Once you hit roughly a 45 degree angle you are going to now “twist” the file to your left, so now the file is sliding further up the shoulder of the fret and you’re beginning to create the sides of your crown. Continue this process rotating the file further and as you get towards the top, you will be beginning to almost “float” the file over the fret as you’ll have less to anchor your arms on.
Repeat this process for the right side of the fret, and continue back and forth until your fret crown is even, and uniform. You can also use some marker for this process so that as you file away material you should be left with a thinner and thinner mark across the top, or spine of the fret, the goal here is to get this mark/line as this as possible, so that you are only then having to just barely kiss the tops of your frets with the file, and removing as little material as possible from your now perfectly level playing surface.

Polishing is quite straight forward.
Cut yourself two strips of 1200 and two strips of 2000 grit wet and dry sandpaper, and wrap them around your nail buffer. We are going to perform the same motion we did during the fret crowning portion of this guide, or just general fret polishing (If you’ve done our guitar and bass setup Masterclass)
Start at the heel, and on the left side of the fret again, and as you polish back and forth you are going to “roll” the buffer up the shoulder of the fret, pressing just hard enough that you can feel some resistance between the fret that’s been filed, which will be a little rough and the sandpaper. Repeat this process on the other side of the fret, and then repeat again with the 2000 grit sandpaper.
Once that’s done you can move on to the polishing your frets with the nail buffer, the same steps, higher and higher grit until you get to the polishing/emery board.
Once this is done you should now have nicely crowned, shiny, smooth frets that are going to be a dream to play on.

Congratulations, you’ve just finished your first re fret!!
Now it’s time to move on to Making and slotting a bone nut, or whatever other material you want to choose.



Nut Making
Tools: Nut slotting files, Feeler gauges, pencil, nut spacing ruler. Scalpel/razor blade.


Removing the previous nut:
Tools: Small hammer, block of wood or similar,
Gently remove the nut, for most standard guitar (non Gibson/Fender) you should be able to just gently tap the nut from the front side with a small block of wood and a hammer, and it should come right off. If the nut has lacquer behind it from the headstock end then you will need to use a sharp scalpel to lance the lacquer and release it from the nut, and the same with the sides/edges where the nut meets the next wood material.

If you have a Gibson, the nut will need to be cut down the middle, and compressed/collapsed in on itself. The reason for this is the a Gibson headstock veneer will generally back up onto the back of the nut, and if you proceed to just tap it out, you can pop the fingerboard right off the neck as the nut slot acts as a fulcrum.

If you have a fender, you can use some fret pulling pliers to grab the nut, and gently wiggle it back and forth, breaking the glue contact and slowly lifting the nut out of the slot.

Remove any old glue from the nut slot, you can use a small chisel or file, and ensure the nut slot is nice and flat in order to take a new blank. You can check how flat your nut slot is from E to e with your fret rocker.



Nut blank preparation
Tools:

Start with thicknessing your nut blank, if this is for a fender, you can cut a blank in half using a small hand saw or a band saw. For a Gibson style blank you can thickness this on a flat surface with some sandpaper and double sided tape. Alternatively if you have the budget, you can get yourself a small hobby belt sander which will make very short work of this task.

Once the nut is the right thickness, test fit it in the guitar, it should sit flat without rocking back and forth, if it doesn’t, check your nut slot is flat, if there is a slight forward or backwards tilt in the slot you can manipulate the base of your nut blank on the belt sander to get away from this.

For fender slots: These will generally have a radius’ nut slot, and you will need to put a radius on the base of your nut blank as well. If the slot is 9.5” radius, which most are, then you can check what radius the fingerboard is, and if it matches, place some sandpaper with double sided tape on the fingerboard, and sand back and forth the underside of your nut blank, until it’s the same radius as the slot.
If it’s not the same, you can purchase the appropriate sanding block and sand a radius into a piece of scrap wood, and then proceed with the above steps.
Lastly, you can purchase pre radius’ed nut blanks, however most will not be unbleached bone, so keep this in mind when purchasing.


Now that the nut blank is in flat and ready for shaping, take your pencil and score a line where the edges of the nut meet the neck. Proceed to trimming off the excess until its nice and flush against the neck.

For Gibson style nuts you can ‘round off the back of the nut so that the strings have as little contact as possible, we don’t need to leave nuts square and boxy, as this hiders tuning stability due to the extra string contact through the nut.

Take your feeler gauges and measure them against the first fret, by eye or feel, choose a measurement that matches the height of your first fret exactly, now add 12 thou’ to this measurement, and this will be your beginning nut height.
Place the feeler gauges against the front of the nut, and score a line from E to e so you have an idea of how much excess you can remove.
Remove the nut and remove the excess on a sander or use a vice and do this with a hand file, you can “cheat” this a little and remove a little extra material from the high e side, as the strings are thinner they don’t need as much room to sit in the nut.

Now you’re ready to glue the nut in. For Gibson style nuts, apply 3 small dots of slow drying CA to the base of the nut and two on the front, for fender style slots, you just need 3 small dots on the base.

Now that the nut is glued in, we can begin marking our nut slots and filing them.
For this part, you will need a string spacing rule from Stewart McDonald, unless you want to do it manually and compensate for string thicknesses by eye, like I used to do (I wouldn’t recommend this very long and painstaking process)

From the edge of your frets playing surface, which is where the ‘bevel’ on the edges of you frets finishes, you want measure in 2-3mm in, depending on how cramped you want your string spacing. This will be selective depending on each player, for instance if you are having issues with your high e string sliding off the edge of the fingerboard you may benefit from placing the strings a little further in from the playing surface. Place a low E and a high e through the bridge and string it up over the blank nut if you are unsure where you would like your outside string placement, this will give you a good visual reference.

Mark your outside strings, for the low E you want to mark where you think the centre of the string is sitting, for the high e just shift it aside and mark that space it sat at, then place the strings back over the marks you’ve made and take a visual note of how they sit, make adjustments if you need to by removing the previous mark and making a new one.

Now that you have your outside strings marked, place the rule over the marks and scribe the lines for your inside strings (the stewmac ruler shows you how to do this, please read the instructions that should come with your string spacing ruler)

Once these string placements are marked, take a razor blade and ‘score’ the lines you’ve marked, making sure to centre the razor blade where you’ve marked, this part is crucial to proper string spacing/separation.

With your scored markings, you can now take your 0.010” nut slotting file, and slot all 6 (or 7, or 8 or even 12!) nut slots, by dragging the file across the marks you have scores you should feel the file ‘click’ into the scored marks, and now gently push/pull the file back and forth 1-2 times so that you now have a slot as to which you can begin your filing with the actual gauged files you will be using for each individual string.

Don’t forget that you can ‘cheat’ your nut slotting widths by a few thousandths of an inch each string. For your plain string a slot size that is 2-3 thou larger won’t matter too much, and for your wound strings you can file a slot that is 6-8 thou larger and it won’t matter too much either, this is an important thing to take not of if you have a customer that changes gauges or someone who only has one guitar and likes to change and experiment with various tunings.

Now the the nut slots are cut, we can begin to remove any extra excess material from the top of the nut, we do this with a file, remembering that we only need 2/3rds of the wound strings to sit inside the nut slot, and for the plain things we want them to sit just inside the nut slot, so they don’t pop/slip out with any bends below the 5th fret.

Polishing the nut