Guitar restoration - Part 13 - Fretjob

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As the bridge was clamped, I couldn't stand to wait, and realized that I could already start leveling and polishing the frets. So after getting some inspiration from other builders, I have started.

The most useful videos  I've watched on how to do a fret job were:

Fret job - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra1-HQ6GOxw - Highline Guitars
Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDy7cF255dY
Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbr0VR2CdQ
Fret polishing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpeCq_1AvwU - Guns and Guitars

So, my steps were:
  1. Skipped checking the neck being straight, as I checked it already with the frets of, and it was dead-straight, and I have sanded it  straight
  2. Created a leveling beam from a longer (~50cm) block of wood which was planed to be perfectly flat on two sides. I have glued 240 and 320 grit sandpaper to the two flat sides
  3. Masked the fretboard with masking tape
  4. Marked the tops of the frets with a black sharpie
  5. Sanded with 240 grit until the black sharpie marks were gone in the middle of all frets (on some frets there was only a thin line missing the sharpie mark, others were seriously flattened)
  6. Marked the tops of the frets again with the black sharpie
  7. Sanded with 320 grit once more until the sharpie marks were gone
  8. Put 5 layers of masking tape on the 14th fret where the body meets the neck, and leveled the last frets between the joint and the soundhole (fall-off)
  9. Remasked the fretboard as the masking tape was full of fine steel powder sanded off the frets
  10. Re-crowned the frets with a cheap fret crowning tool (I got it from Gearbest, the brand is Homeland), which worked out reasonably well
  11. Sanded with 400 grit, 600 grit, 1200 grit and 1500 grit to remove the sanding marks and crowning tool marks from the frets
  12. Polished with a dremel and some rubbing compound until the frets are shining like mirrors.


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