Eureka! Did my first fret job today!!!

[Santraginus]

I spent weeks contemplating about a decision: should I take my Warmoth-parts bass to a pro or should I dare to do the fret-dressing on my own...

Well, today I decided - and spend the entire afternoon and evening doing my first fret-job.

Basically, I followed the steps that Dan Erlewine describes in his book on g****r repair, i.e. I used black marker on the surfaces of the frets in order to see how much metal is taken away. I used neither a file nor sandpaper, but a big, perfectly flat water-stone that I normally use to sharpen my hocho (japanese knives).

It worked out fine - and I think that the key to success was to do very very small steps at a time. Guess I re-strung the bass about 20 times to check if everything worked.

So: I did my first fret job today - and succeeded!

[Trevorus]

That's awesome. I may end up doing this on some instruments of mine. A fine polishing stone like that would make slow progress that would be easy to control. Very cool!

[Santraginus]

Yep - using the stone was key. It prevented me from taking away too much too fast.
I planed the stone before using it, just by wet-sanding it on a piece of 120 grit sand paper on a perfectly flat piece of glass. And since the stone has two sides (1000 and 3000 grit), I could also use it to polish the fret surfaces.