Refretting a lacquered fretboard

A couple of weeks ago a friend brought his Jazz Base over and asked if I would refret it for him. Altho I've fretted quite a few guitars, I had never done on with a lacquered maple fretboard. Had a couple of opportunities, turned them down.

I actually asked here and on another forum what people thought

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/refretting-a-lacquered-fretboard.1022274/

On the other forum two repair people who I highly respect chimed in, one said "you can do it", the other said that their shop has stopped doing them and they refer the work elsewhere.

I really wanted a reason to say no. I told my friend all the things that could go wrong, that I had never done one and I was afraid to mess up his lovely bass. I considered just dressing the frets that were on it, but even that was fraught with potential issues. Finally I said OK.

I decided to replace the first 9 and masked off that part of the board. Here is the upper frets and the finish I want to preserve

Oh, just to add one more little complication, even tho its a one piece neck (I think) it is bound in black plastic



I scribed around the base of each fret with an Xacto knife to cut through the finish



And pulled 'em. The old frets came out hard, even with heat, but very little actual chipping



Cleaned out the slots, bent and cut off the new frets. Filed back the tang to fit between the binding. I find an Xacto knife really good for cleaning out the slots, as well as that funny little saw



Pressed 'em in with a drop of medium CA in the slot



Clamped them up over night. Next day I clipped the ends and dressed them being as careful as I could about not damaging the finish near the ends





Marked the tops of the frets with a magic marker and backed off the truss rod so the board would be flat



and leveled them with the big beam

 

More of the saga. In spite of all of my efforts I did manage to scratch the finish in a few spots and while there wasn't much chip out the edge of the frets just didn't look as good as I would have liked. So out came the spray gun and 6 coats went on



What a total hassle mixing the little bit of lacquer, cleaning the gun and all for just two passes down the neck. Fifteen minutes of fiddling for fifteen seconds of shooting



I thinned the last coat pretty heavily but I'm just not a good enough finisher to get a perfect application that doesn't need buffing. Its pretty good, but not like it was before.

Let this dry for a couple of days, masked the board back off and scraped the frets themself.



Pulled that tape, sanded at 1500 and buffed



notice that the foam pad has picked up a bunch of color from the frets - its probably shot for any future buffing

Put the neck back on the bass and did a little setup




When I played up the neck the middle strings were slightly buzzy and I thought "what the heck". Checking the radius at the bridge it was much flatter than the fretboard - raised the center saddles slightly and all is good.

 

I'm satisfied with the results but its certainly not my best effort. It easily took me twice as long as a "normal" fret job. I might consider doing another one for a friend as long as we had a serious discussion first, but like my friend Hesh at the other forum suggested, I'm not interested in doing this on a regular basis.

 

Thanks everyone. Owner just picked it up and is over joyed - he has a number of basses but this is his baby. I won't say that I'll never do another one but I have a much better idea of what I'm getting into. Actually, that is not true, it was pretty much exactly what I thought I was getting into.

I use Mequiars #2 and #3 for all of my polishing, either with the foam pad or with a small pedestal buffer. The #3 glazing compound doesn't have silicon or wax, is available at my auto parts store and seems to do a pretty good job. Normally I would start standing at 800 or 1000 and go to 2000 but I didn't want to burn thru the finish around the frets.

 

I have used Colortone and Behlens from StewMac, Behlens seems to be no longer available. Recently I've purchased Cardinal lacquer from LMII - unlike SM, LMII ships for free. I try to match the sealer and use the same brand of thinner for reducing the lacquer - I don't always know what they put in the stuff so I try to stay with the brand. For clean up I just buy generic lacquer thinner from a box store.

Thats actually a good thing to note here, the only reason I would consider doing this is that I knew I could fix the lacquer - if it was some modern catalyzed poly-something I wouldn't have even attempted it.

 

Put a drop of lacquer thinner on some part of the finish that is hidden - in this case the bottom of the neck heel (you can also remove a tuner and do it on the footprint). If the finish softens it is lacquer. You can also make some guesses from the age and type of guitar, sometimes the manufacturer will tell what they use.,