After reading the inspiring story of Jaco's famous defret and the helpful tutorials here on TB I decided to give my old Yamaha some life.
I ordered a pair of nippers, a radius block, and some purflings from stew mac and as soon as I got them I started ripping out my frets.
I started out slowly rocking out the frets, once I had them all out I started cutting pieces of purfling the size of the frets.
One at a time I super glued them in by pressing a dab of glue into the slot at each end and pressing the wood strip in while the glue dried (a few seconds)
They went in fairly easy and the higher frets seemed to be a bit deeper than the ones near the nut.
Once I had all of the purfling strips in I used my nippers to clip off any excess wood sticking up past the top of the fretboard.
After all of that very gently sanded with 150 grit sandpaper and then switched to 400.
I was pleasantly surprised with the results, I barely had to change my string height and it sounded awesome, very warm with plenty of 'mwah'.
Sorry I don't have any pics of when I first finished the FB, I kind of expected I was going to screw it up so I didn't take any pics.
I could have stopped here and been very satisfied with the results, but it wasn't enough for me.
I noticed that my roundwounds were making faint lines in the FB after a little playing so I decided to epoxy the neck to protect it from further damage.
I chose the only 2 part pour-on epoxy I could find at Home Depot, it's called super glaze or something like that by Parks.
Before I cleaned the FB with mineral spirits I taped off the sides of the fretboard and neck, I neglected a tiny spot on the back of the neck and I regret it.
anyways, it was a 1:1 ratio, and when I poured on the first coat I feared I was going to screw up the neck, but instead I only got epoxy everywhere
I used a squeegee as the instructions suggested, (which by the way was destroyed by epoxy) and after some fussing I was able to get a nice even coat.
The instructions said to put down one thin coat and let it dry before adding the thicker coat.
After about an hour or so I mixed up some more epoxy since the small batch I was working with had hardened completely.
I then poured this onto the FB trying to get as even as I could, eventually it all leveled itself out, but I believe my bass was slightly off-level because the finished product looks thinner at the first fret.
After a couple of hours of checking on the neck I decided the tape needed to come off if I didn't want painters tape forever attached to the neck, maybe I could have taken it off later, but I was nervous and had no answer as to when to remove the tape.
Long story short it came out looking pretty good, save a few air bubble and one effed up part on the 1st fret, but they're minor and dont effect my playing. (oh and did I mention that a page from Rolling Stone is now permanently a part of my bass?)
When I strung it up I put a new bridge on too, it took me a minute of adjusting the string height and truss rod before I could get a buzz free sound, but now it plays great, though I'd like the action to be a little lower.
The only thing is that the FB is now flat, and I'm afraid of sanding the epoxy and not getting back the glorious shine it has right now. I think I can live with a flat neck as opposed to the 10" radius I had, but something tells me it would play a lot better if I did, but it might look like crap.
I'm going to leave it as is for a few days and see how I like playing it before I tear into it with sand paper.
I've read about people "polishing" after sanding, but what kind of polish do you use exactly? Generic/brand names?
This has been a great learning experience and I couldn't have done it without the wealth of info provided on this site. I could have easily made the neck unplayable, but now it's a joy to slap around.
defretting project 
