Cost of refinishing the fingerboard?

[Oscar South]

The finish of my fingerboard is covered in chips and places where its been worn through and started to peel, it really needs redoing. Can anyone ballpark a figure of how much this'll cost?

Thanks.

[Silversorcerer]

Originally Posted by Oscar South

The finish of my fingerboard is covered in chips and places where its been worn through and started to peel, it really needs redoing. Can anyone ballpark a figure of how much this'll cost?

Thanks.

I've never heard of a fingerboard doing that. The ones I've seen are wood with just either a dark stain or some light drying oil or nothing but bare ebony. Peeling sounds rather odd. I'm guessing fixing it is not viewed as a standard repair either. What kind of DB is this FB on? I suppose you could scrape it or sand it to bare wood and use a penetrating stain of some sort?

[Jake deVilliers]

Sounds like a cheaper bass or BSO with the painted fingerboard.

Best to just scrape that all off and re-surface the board, you'll get a better feel and sound that way.

[robobass]

A lot of newer low end basses come with a hard coating on the fingerboard - epoxy, eurethane, what have you. This is done to improve the appearance and wear of the inferior wood. This stuff is usually a bugger to remove, and I have seen my luthier take a real beating working on these boards. He has a standard price for a dressing, and I think he just eats it, not wanting to charge more to students and hobbiests than he charges pros. You could just sand the stuff off yourself, but you might want to think about re-coating it afterwards if you play the bass alot because of wear issues.
Robobass

[Bob Branstetter]

Originally Posted by robobass

A lot of newer low end basses come with a hard coating on the fingerboard - epoxy, eurethane, what have you. This is done to improve the appearance and wear of the inferior wood. This stuff is usually a bugger to remove, and I have seen my luthier take a real beating working on these boards. He has a standard price for a dressing, and I think he just eats it, not wanting to charge more to students and hobbiests than he charges pros. You could just sand the stuff off yourself, but you might want to think about re-coating it afterwards if you play the bass alot because of wear issues.
Robobass

I once made the mistake of trying to fix one of these fingerboards and swore that I would never, ever do it again. Even if you manage to remove all of that black gook from the wood and refinish it, you are still left with a soft wood under the strings that will quicky dent and become unplayable very quickly. I now either replace the board with a real fingerboard or strongly suggest that the customer should try to find another person to do the job. And since installing a good fingerboard will frequently cost more that the whole bass did new, ...