The Rufus, Fretwork

In this series of photos a much abridged overview of fretwork is discussed. The first step is to radius the ebony board across the its length. The radius block has sand paper on the underside and it takes some time to get it done.




Even after sanding with the blocks the fret board can still be not perfectly level. In this picture I am using a level steel beam with sandpaper glued to one side to make sure the board is level. The more level the board is the less fret dressing I will have to do later.




After the board was level it was sanded to 400 grit and then buffed on the wheel in preparation for the frets. All of the needed tools and fret wire are where I need them.




In order to hide the ends of these frets (unlike a Strat for example) the fretboard was bound with a piece of ebony binding. This look does add a lot of time in preparing the frets to be installed. The frets have to be trimmed and filed before hammering them in. It does look clean though and is worth the time. You can see this detail in the first photo.