So I was in the mood to try my hand at fretless, but with a limited budget I knew my options were going to be a bit narrow. As I was searching around, trying to decide on a Rondo, or what to get, a unique opportunity presented itself. Fellow Talkbasser dmq89 had a fretless neck for
sale. It was a home defret that he bought not knowing it was a home defret.
So I thought I'd give it a shot, and see if I could do anything with it, so get a fretless and work on my wanna be Luthier skills too.
So here is the way it looked when I got it from him.
From a distance it didn't look too bad, but there were some things I wanted to do to it. A close examination showed that the fingerboard wasn't quite level, with the area near the nut being thicker than the rest of the board. It looked like the person doing the refret didn't remove the nut before sanding. Also the fret tangs had removed quite a few chips, and some breakout areas, with the area near the heel of the neck being the most affected. I planned on re-radiusing it so I took some 120 grit sandpaper to get the dye off the neck and attempt to judge the fret slots and chips.
Most of the chips have been filled with wood filler and the filler had shrunk, leaving the chips with some indentations, AND after the dye was removed, a lot of big white spots!
1st things first, after removing the nut, (which I broke!) I took a 10" radius block with some 80 grit sandpaper and began my re-radiusing and leveling, carefully collecting the rosewood dust coming from it.
I wanted lines, but not the big white flags 'flying' off the lines where the chips were. So after I had the neck radius where I wanted it, I took an Xacto and carefully picked out the excess wood filler, leaving me with some chip depressions.
Next I took the rosewood sanding dust, mixed it with wood glue and carefully packed my homemade rosewood putty into the chips and breakouts on the fingerboard. Allowing it to dry then sanding it. It took several go 'rounds for this to be acceptable, not perfect, but very acceptable.
Now, switching to a variety of grits I've sanded using the block through 80, 120, 220, 400, and 600 grits, finally using some steel wool to buff it down even more.
Here's the After shots. As you can see, not perfect, but not bad.
Since these shots I've treated the neck with lemon oil, and attached it to a nice Jazz bass, I have some flat wounds ready for it, and I'm just waiting for a Tusq nut from Graphtech to arrive so I can set it up and see how it plays.
Overall, it was a very rewarding experience, and it was great dealing with dmq89.
I never even LOOKED at the fretlines; just played a few notes on that neck and loved the mwah sound (which I had been looking for). But other then that, the neck stunk on ice. 
