turning a fretted to a fretless??

[poolplayer009]

my bass teacher bought an old fender p-bass with no frets and he wants to fill in the fretmarkers with epoxy. can anyone give me info on this... im not quite sure where to start becuse when they took the frets out there is lots of chips missing out of the wood. anyone who knows anything about this please let me know.

[OldBluesGuy]

Originally Posted by poolplayer009

my bass teacher bought an old fender p-bass with no frets and he wants to fill in the fretmarkers with epoxy. can anyone give me info on this... im not quite sure where to start becuse when they took the frets out there is lots of chips missing out of the wood. anyone who knows anything about this please let me know.

I'm converting a PJ neck to fretless with light colored wood veneers filling in the fret markers and then an epoxy finish over the entire fingerboard in this thread. The few times I've had a chip out I had the chip to glue back in with CA. Unless he somehow has the missing chips I don't have any practical advise to offer on that count. There are some very experienced luthiers and woodworkers in this forum that may be able to offer some suggestions. Are the chipouts really deep and/or very noticeable? Do you have any pics of the neck?


obg

[poolplayer009]

yes the chips are gone and in some places really bad i didnt notice them til i took it home. whoever de-fretted it did an awful job im going to try to get some pics today.

[Alduroth]

I filled my chips etc. in with some sort of claywood, dunno what the english translation is.
Anyway, after that I did some laquer on it and it plays and works fine. Just fill up the chips, get a radius sanding block and yer cool. I dont really have any useful pics. Just this slideshow of the whole refinish. http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/j...t=f7b63d46.pbw
Dunno if this might be useful, but just fill that hole and hide it ^^

[spark_chaser]

I removed the frets out of my old bass, and I had slight fret board chips, what I did was used a good Polyurethane clear coat and brushed about 4 coats on the fret board and once dry sanded back down the the wood again. All the chips in the fret board were then filled with the clear Polyurethane and then used an exacto knife to carefully carve out the fret lines and filled then with a good quality wood putty and sanded smooth again then I put another 3 coats over the entire fret board, i can barely tell were the chip are anymore although probably helps that I'm a paint and body guy the whole process is pretty monotonous