In my area this winter has been a wicked one when it comes to problems of wood shrinkage, with lots of guitars suffering top and back cracks and many instruments with protruding fret ends, also known as fret sprout or whiskers. And I've seen a lot of online advice about how to deal with those sharp fret ends, some good, and some rather bad advice.
First, let's understand what fret sprout is. It's the ends of the frets protruding beyond the edge of the fingerboard. When you run your fingertips along the edge of the fretboard you may feel them catch a bit on the sharp tangs of the fret. In some cases it just catches a bit. In really bad cases it may be enough to cut your finger. That's fret sprout.
But are the frets actually sprouting? No. It's that the fretboard is shrinking a bit across its width. The wood shrinks and the frets don't, so the ends of the frets stick out a bit. Why does it happen? Is it a fault of manufacture? Well generally it is not a fault of manufacture. If anything it's more likely to be a user fault. If you don't humidify your instrument in the months when the air is drier, the wood is likely to shrink. Even a well-seasoned piece of wood will continue to adapt to humidity changes in the way wood does, by expanding and contracting.
Some species of wood react more to these changes in humidity than others, and even within a species, some boards will react more than others. Quarter cut wood will shrink less across its grain than flat sawn. And a finished or sealed wood will also react less than an unsealed one. So you can not call it a manufacturing flaw when you decide you want a maple fingerboard (generally more reactive than rosewood), that's unfinished, and you don't keep the instrument well-humidified in the winter months. So preventive measures are simple - keep the instrument humidified.
But now you have fret sprout and you need to deal with it. What should you do? I would say take it to a pro to have the fret ends dressed. It takes some practice to do a good job, and it is necessary to use the right tools. And there's where the problems lie. First, much of what you see online will tell you that you can do this yourself, and some go so far to say that a pro like me will advise you not to do it yourself because I want your money. That's generally not true. It's a fussy job that doesn't pay well and with the backlog most of us have in our shops we hardly are interested to add it to our workload for the bit it pays.
The real reasons to have a pro do it is because he/she has the practice and the right tools for the job. And then there's the consideration that if you do it yourself and botch it, it's on you. If the pro botches the job, it's on him/her to fix it.
So what are the right tools and techniques? I will delve into that in the next post or two, along with some examples of what it looks like when it's done well and when it's done poorly.
First, let's understand what fret sprout is. It's the ends of the frets protruding beyond the edge of the fingerboard. When you run your fingertips along the edge of the fretboard you may feel them catch a bit on the sharp tangs of the fret. In some cases it just catches a bit. In really bad cases it may be enough to cut your finger. That's fret sprout.
But are the frets actually sprouting? No. It's that the fretboard is shrinking a bit across its width. The wood shrinks and the frets don't, so the ends of the frets stick out a bit. Why does it happen? Is it a fault of manufacture? Well generally it is not a fault of manufacture. If anything it's more likely to be a user fault. If you don't humidify your instrument in the months when the air is drier, the wood is likely to shrink. Even a well-seasoned piece of wood will continue to adapt to humidity changes in the way wood does, by expanding and contracting.
Some species of wood react more to these changes in humidity than others, and even within a species, some boards will react more than others. Quarter cut wood will shrink less across its grain than flat sawn. And a finished or sealed wood will also react less than an unsealed one. So you can not call it a manufacturing flaw when you decide you want a maple fingerboard (generally more reactive than rosewood), that's unfinished, and you don't keep the instrument well-humidified in the winter months. So preventive measures are simple - keep the instrument humidified.
But now you have fret sprout and you need to deal with it. What should you do? I would say take it to a pro to have the fret ends dressed. It takes some practice to do a good job, and it is necessary to use the right tools. And there's where the problems lie. First, much of what you see online will tell you that you can do this yourself, and some go so far to say that a pro like me will advise you not to do it yourself because I want your money. That's generally not true. It's a fussy job that doesn't pay well and with the backlog most of us have in our shops we hardly are interested to add it to our workload for the bit it pays.
The real reasons to have a pro do it is because he/she has the practice and the right tools for the job. And then there's the consideration that if you do it yourself and botch it, it's on you. If the pro botches the job, it's on him/her to fix it.
So what are the right tools and techniques? I will delve into that in the next post or two, along with some examples of what it looks like when it's done well and when it's done poorly.
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