Fretless superglue question

fourstringbliss · #1 12-05-2012, 08:53 AM

I'm going to be defretting a maple fretboard and want to coat it with superglue. I'm going to be filling the fret slots with styrene plastic strips. Do I need to sand off all the poly and apply the superglue on bare maple? Can I radius sand the poly smooth and apply the superglue coatings over that? What do you think?

fourstringbliss · #2 12-05-2012, 01:25 PM

Anybody?

slngd · #3 12-07-2012, 05:05 AM

I've defretted a maple fb with what i think was a poly finish, and all we did was to smoothen the finish down very lightly with 240 grit sandpaper, and then a good rub with a scotch brite. Did not remove it, and we just put the CA (superglue) finish on top of that.
Its held up well for quite a while now, so i dont think its a problem.

But i would recommend epoxy instead of the CA glue. Much easier to work with.

Hope you can use this information for something. I am by no means an expert but i have done 2 defrets.

Stilettoprefer · #4 12-07-2012, 09:56 PM

When you're radius sanding, you'll probably break through that poly finish. I'd just get the whole thing down to bare wood and do the finishing from there.

And there will be divots in the poly where the fret wire used to be, and that would take a lot of time and sanding to build up superglue in those divots.