sucessfully dressed and crowned my own frets!

[toytech]

Yay it worked. I used a curved sanding board that I bought on ebay in a set with different radii. After figuring out which one matched the frets on the sx 5string I picked up as a mule to try this on (12" radius by the way) I removed tension from truss rod (strings off) and sanded the frets with 600 grit wet/dry paper and the curved board until all the crowns of the frets were being hit by the paper (I used a felt pen on the fret tops to make it easy to see). When they were even, I carefully filed each one with a fret crowning file until the flat spot on the fret from sanding was "just"
gone, following that I hand sanded them lightly with 1500 grit paper wrapped around my fingers going from end of neck to end lightly hitting the frets with the paper either way to clean up the file marks, then finished by polishing the frets and finger board with automotive polishing compound (it is a maple board with poly finish)
bringing the frets to a nice polish. restrung with fresh dr's, lowered the nut slots until they were ~ .005-.010 at the first fret with a feeler gauge while holding the 3rd g to b, then adjusted to pitch, set relief using a capo to hold the first fret down as described in one of the stickies, lowered the action and intonated. I am very happy with the results and gettting more confident in my abilities. (I am building a parts bass, and want to eventually scratch build one).
Thanks to all who have posted links and info.
Chris

[krrt]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I, too, have an SX that I plan to use for practice as I work up to building a bass from scratch. Making a new nut and dressing the frets are the next items on my list, so I hope you don't mind a few questions.

After you removed the neck and took the tension off the truss rod, did you use a straight edge to check the overall flatness of the neck? If so, how close was it?

Did you run across any frets that were particularly high or low? From playing, I haven't detected any noticeably high or low frets on my SX, but I'm curious if they might show up when I go to dress them.

What kind of file did you use to crown? There are several at Stew-Mac ranging from cheap to expensive, and I'm wondering how much I should spend for something I'm not likely to use all that much.

[toytech]

these are the tools I used for the nut and dressing
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQ...ZnormanQ5f1957
and the crowning file
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQ...QsassZ509mikev
I used the sanding board as a straight edge.
there were at least 3 or 4 high frets in comparison to the others. The uneven frets you could see after you start to sand them. If they had been worse I would have started with a 320 grit first, then gone finer. I may still shim the neck slightly forward a bit, and the bridge is just awful, very hard to intonate, a toy really. The tuners are nice and tight though, the pickups have no hum and are quite hot, (hate the tall pole pieces though) I may cut a new nut just for practice too, but the one on the bass is working fine. Another note on the sx fiver is that you need to remove the string tree to adjust the truss rod, it interferes with the allen wrench.

[krrt]

Originally Posted by toytech

these are the tools I used for the nut and dressing
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQ...ZnormanQ5f1957
and the crowning file
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQ...QsassZ509mikev
I used the sanding board as a straight edge.
there were at least 3 or 4 high frets in comparison to the others. The uneven frets you could see after you start to sand them. If they had been worse I would have started with a 320 grit first, then gone finer. I may still shim the neck slightly forward a bit, and the bridge is just awful, very hard to intonate, a toy really. The tuners are nice and tight though, the pickups have no hum and are quite hot, (hate the tall pole pieces though) I may cut a new nut just for practice too, but the one on the bass is working fine. Another note on the sx fiver is that you need to remove the string tree to adjust the truss rod, it interferes with the allen wrench.

Great, thanks for the info and the links.

I've found intonation very finicky as well (though new strings helped a lot), so I guess a new bridge is in my future.

I'm happy with the pickups and will keep them for the time being. The height of the pole pieces hasn't bothered me much, but I wish the springs supporting the pickups were stiffer; I use the top edge of the P pickup as a thumb rest, and I find it pushes in pretty easily when I play. I'll probably end up sticking some foam underneath the pickup to provide more resistance.

I shielded the control and pickup cavities and find the P pickup dead quiet. I get the expected (but acceptable) single-coil hum when the J is soloed. Pots are pretty clean, just a tiny bit of scratchiness in the tone pot. They'll be getting replaced before long.

So far, this project has been a lot of fun and I'm learning a lot. Thanks for your help.

[dbcandle]

I've been tempted to take that on, but I've been concerned about how I'd get the neck on my MIM Jazz *pefectly* straight before filing/sanding.

Did you carefully make sure, with strings off, you had zero relief before filing/sanding?

I don't know if my neck would go straight without strings if I loosened the truss-rod. I'd prefer to avoid the wear/tear on the neck and truss-rod unless I actually "go for it", so I haven't tried yet.