Kevin Chilcott
Luthier
REPAIRING NAIL-GOUGES IN A FINGERBOARD
After a guitar has been
around for a while, which doesn't have to be too long, and is used on a
reasonably frequent basis, certain things start to become apparent to the owner
- the hardware
seems to dull off
and tarnish
even rust,
the screws, nuts and bolts
etc become dull
and 'grubby',
the body
has sticky marks
all over it and the fingerboard
seems to collect "all manner of crap"
a lot of which is actually pretty smelly
;0)
Most of this can be easily sorted to a certain extent by cleaning,
but another problem that arises are nail-gouges in the fingerboard,
essentially caused by long fingernails
that overtime dig little trenches
along the string lines between the frets in the 'most used' areas.
The major problem in trying
to repair these areas is that the fingerboard is usually very dirty and greasy,
and so repair is made very difficult.
The easiest time to do this is when the fingerboard is being re-fretted
- as in the initial example I'm going to show.
Cleaning The Fingerboard
After the frets have been
removed (Please
see the relevent section if you want to see how o do this),
the fingerboard
needs to be cleaned
thoroughly, and the best thing I've found to do this is Methylated
Spirits (Which
is highly Flammable)
on a rag wiped all over the fingerboard several times.
Be careful not to get it on the guitar finish..... it shouldn't do much harm on
a normal gloss type finish, but care must be taken anyway.
You will be amazed on how much 'crap'
comes off.
Sanding The Fingerboard
The surface of the fingerboard needs to be sanded... as part of the process of doing a re-fret.
PIX COMING...
Cleaning the Area to be Filled
PIX COMING...
I'll continue this section as soon as possible...