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Fretless boards: harder than CA or Epoxy, but still manageable? Does it exist?

#101
40Hz said:
Dunno. I’ve played fretless fingerboards for as long as I‘ve been playing bass. First on upright and later on bass guitar.

I don’t buy the argument that rosewood has somehow become mysteriously softer of late. I’d very much like to observe the playing technique of these customers that are wearing out their fretboards so quickly.



If you’re going to solicit opinions from actual fretless players it’d be nice if you’d be a little more respectful when the responses you receive aren’t what you want to hear. Nobody is in denial. We are, however, extremely skeptical because what you’re saying is news - and doesn’t sync with the collective experience of the fretless players who are responding. And if this were as common a problem as you’re seeing, you can be sure there'd be a major buzz in the fretless player community about it. Especially since not all of us are playing ‘vintage’ or expensive/boutique instruments as you seem to be implying.

But either way, if your customers are quickly wearing out their fretboards (for whatever reason) their only option is to replace the fingerboard. If they can’t afford your services, then that’s the breaks. It’s your job to deliver a working solution - not butt heads with the manufacturers or deliver the lowest cost compromise that's humanly possible. Go with what you know will work. If the board is supposedly so soft that even an epoxy coating doesn’t help matters(!) as you’re saying, then its too soft and needs to be replaced. Period. :)
Click to expand...
I think Home Depot sells a wood hardener made by minwax that's a penetrating type solution. Has anyone tried that as a prep for superglue or epoxy? Just asking for a friend. ;)
 
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#102
OogieWaWa said:
Definitely not a luthier here, but I've got 40+ years of woodworking hobby experience. Consider this:

This has been said, but not followed up on. If the substrate of the finish (the rosewood) really is soft, it will be essentially like putting a nice hard finish on a sponge. If you press hard enough, or over a small enough area, no matter what kind of thin layer you put on it, eventually the finish will crack and break down unless it is really flexible. Or unless you get it really thick. And even then they can separate. So the property you need is toughness, not so much hardness.

I have used a product on older, partly rotten wood that has a strong penetrating carrier and a very hard resin component that gets drawn relatively deep into the wood (like maybe 3/8" into old floor joists): Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener. It turns the surface into a plastic rock; it's actually hard to sand and machine. Basically you've made something like carbon fiber or fiberglass, where the wood is the fiber part.

Ideal? No, there are drawbacks.

The wood will expand some, and it really darkens the surface. Both not good in this case. But I don't know anything else like it. It's also got ketones (Acetone) as the carrier, rather nasty stuff; don't snort or taste it, and limit breathing the vapors!!! Here's a link:

Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener - Harden Wood | Minwax

The other issue is that rosewood is an "oily wood", and by it's nature it doesn't allow most things to penetrate very deeply. Maybe bleaching and alcohol beforehand would lessen the impact of darkening and not penetrating, that would have to be tested on a scrap piece, but I wouldn't get hopeful.

Just my two cents; and there may be other products out there that are similar but more suitable.

Edit: It also instantly dissolves any plastic it comes in contact with, things like inlays and side markers may come off, whatever it touches is pretty much permanent.
Click to expand...
This is what I also mentioned!
 
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#103
mtb777 said:
I think Home Depot sells a wood hardener made by minwax that's a penetrating type solution. Has anyone tried that as a prep for superglue or epoxy? Just asking for a friend. ;)
Click to expand...

Wouldn’t take much time, money or effort to try it. A scrap hunk of rosewood, some of that product, and a real world test might produce more useful information (and possibly a solution if one is actually needed) than 200 posts worth of forum speculation. ;) :):thumbsup:
 
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#104
I posted a picture of this awhile back regarding a different topic. It was a $50.00 thrift store find. An indonesian cheaply Squire p-bass special. (P +J pickups) Didn't need it but saw an art project in my head. I'm an auto painter so I did a complete repaint in turquoise including the headstock. It plays and sounds better than it has any right to! The J pickup was weak of course. That was expected. Replacement was a Seymour Duncan. And I love the chrome retro covers as well. With less than $200.00 invested it looks like a diamond. I've always preferred the more immediate and percussive tone of a maple fretboard so I thought I would apply an automotive clearcoat to the rosewood board as an experiment. I wasn't concerned about ruining a $50.00 bass. I haven't actually played it a lot but I do always use Rotosound rat tail file strings on all my units. Even though it is fretted I can't see any real evidence of scratching or wear and it is a brighter tone as I was hoping for! I feel that this is a coating that would hold up on a fretless with flatwound strings very well. I don't know if such a process would be appropriate for a fretless. I suppose it depends upon the type of tone that somebody is desiring. Also worthy of mentioning is that I know how to do my own setup and upon reassembly I was amazed by how it plays and sounds great! Aggressive as a buzz saw! It's got perfect intonation on every fret of every string! I did no adjustments at all. Just threw it back together in a hurry. This never happens! Some instruments are blessed with the magic and some unfortunately are not.
20191204_123742.jpg
 
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#105
OogieWaWa said:
Definitely not a luthier here, but I've got 40+ years of woodworking hobby experience. Consider this:

This has been said, but not followed up on. If the substrate of the finish (the rosewood) really is soft, it will be essentially like putting a nice hard finish on a sponge. If you press hard enough, or over a small enough area, no matter what kind of thin layer you put on it, eventually the finish will crack and break down unless it is really flexible. Or unless you get it really thick. And even then they can separate. So the property you need is toughness, not so much hardness.

I have used a product on older, partly rotten wood that has a strong penetrating carrier and a very hard resin component that gets drawn relatively deep into the wood (like maybe 3/8" into old floor joists): Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener. It turns the surface into a plastic rock; it's actually hard to sand and machine. Basically you've made something like carbon fiber or fiberglass, where the wood is the fiber part.

Ideal? No, there are drawbacks.

The wood will expand some, and it really darkens the surface. Both not good in this case. But I don't know anything else like it. It's also got ketones (Acetone) as the carrier, rather nasty stuff; don't snort or taste it, and limit breathing the vapors!!! Here's a link:

Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener - Harden Wood | Minwax

The other issue is that rosewood is an "oily wood", and by it's nature it doesn't allow most things to penetrate very deeply. Maybe bleaching and alcohol beforehand would lessen the impact of darkening and not penetrating, that would have to be tested on a scrap piece, but I wouldn't get hopeful.

Just my two cents; and there may be other products out there that are similar but more suitable.

Edit: It also instantly dissolves any plastic it comes in contact with, things like inlays and side markers may come off, whatever it touches is pretty much permanent.
Click to expand...

System Three mirror coat is an extremely low viscosity designed to “self-level” on a table top and penetrate into the wood fiber. Its also recommended to wipe the surface with acetone prior to application to remove oils and enhance penetration.
So, I believe it checks all the boxes and when applied correctly according to manufacturer’s instructions would solve the OPs issues.
 
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#106
Watchootognbout said:
The Le Fay Remington Steele.
REMINGTON-STEELE ::
View attachment 3617976
Click to expand...
Ironically, when Travis Bean was making their deluxe basses with aluminum necks they put rosewood fingerboards on them (or is that koa same as the bodies were made from?):
Also ironic is that we've now gone on speculating for some time with no input from the original poster since the first page or so.
bean10-jpg.jpg
 
#107
Pauly 4001 said:
Ironically, when Travis Bean was making their deluxe basses with aluminum necks they put rosewood fingerboards on them (or is that koa same as the bodies were made from?):
Also ironic is that we've now gone on speculating for some time with no input from the original poster since the first page or so.
View attachment 3619053
Click to expand...
The Remington has a stainless fingerboard.Not neck.
 
#110
OogieWaWa is correct in everything he said! Rosewood is no cinch to refinish. Most woods are difficult to say the least. Anyone's first attempt to do this will be very frustrating. OogieWaWa understands that the most important part of achieving a quality finish is in careful, meticulous prep work. Another component is patience! Rosewood because of it's accurately described "sponge like" quality is similar to most wood products. You can chop down a tree and cut it into pieces...but it almost never stops moving and breathing! In my description of applying an automotive clearcoat to a cheap squire neck (mine is fretted) I left out some details. First of all this bass upon close inspection did not appear to have been played very much at all. It still had the plastic protective coating on the pickguard and original strings still sounded bright and fresh. There was hardly any wear on it anywhere even though the serial # indicated that it was born in 2006. Rosewood does have natural oily qualities but this one had plenty of years to dry out somewhat and didn't appear to have ever been treated with any type of wood protectant. Plenty of thorough cleaning and sanding was required and still I knew fully what the result would be after applying two coats of clear. It looked like absolute horrendous crap because of it's porous nature and oily quality. Every imperfection was magnified hugely! The cure for this as well as refinishing most woods is patience! I was in no hurry when I did this and had lots of other more important things to tend to at the time. I left the neck alone for at least a month to allow the clear to dry thoroughly. I wanted all the solvents to evaporate out of it as much as possible as it was curing and shrinking up. After another very thorough sanding I once again applied two more very thick coats of clear and it looked like a mirror. I don't have any reason to believe it will fail and in the unlikely chance that it will I'm out very little as it was a cheap bass to begin with. If a refretting is ever done to this neck it would be a mess and probably impossible. Besides my desire to achieve a brighter tone similar to a maple product another benefit of doing this is that by sealing the rosewood in a total of four thick coats of urethane the neck doesn't breath or expand and contract as it normally would. I live in colorado and having to do twice a year minor adjustments to a rosewood fretboard is normal because of seasonal changes. I noticed a long time ago that my maple fretboard Fender basses don't shift as much because of whatever product that the factory coats them with. One curiousity is that I also own a couple of Epiphone t-birds and they appear to be rosewood as well. But they have never seemed to move and have never needed any adjustments at all. Is this because of a different type of rosewood?
 
#111
Although hating to be longwinded I also want to say that I have a 10 year old .MIM Fender Jazz and the fretboard though it does have some of the same textural qualities as rosewood it is much lighter in color and also seems to be somewhat smoother and harder. It even has a different odor! My imagination or does anybody know what this is?
 
#112
I love this thread. I have eaten up fingerboards as I have heavy hand from learning of cheap uprights with bad set ups and like the roundwood sound. If I wanted I board finished where you you recommended I send it besides to Thor who has a long wait list. Any body here feel comfortable doing such a job, as I may think I could do it, but know deep down I would F*@4 it up. Thanks
 
#113
Many of us have been comfortable doing fingerboard coating ourselves with successful results. CA and epoxy are probably the most common choices. It's not particularly challenging, I bet you could find lots of threads if you searched in this subforum for fimgerboard coating or CA or epoxy. If it's a used fingerboard, you'll want to make sure it is clean and free of contamination, especially if you've ever put any product of any kind on it (i.e. if you've oiled it). Honestly, with all due respect to the people participating here, outside of a small number of these posts, I would not treat this thread as a great source of practical information. It seems more like a mild rant followed by some gentle trolling and typical internet one-upmanship. If you want to learn about this subject it would probably be better to just search for old threads since it's been covered many times.
 
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#114
dwizum said:
Many of us have been comfortable doing fingerboard coating ourselves with successful results. CA and epoxy are probably the most common choices. It's not particularly challenging, I bet you could find lots of threads if you searched in this subforum for fimgerboard coating or CA or epoxy. If it's a used fingerboard, you'll want to make sure it is clean and free of contamination, especially if you've ever put any product of any kind on it (i.e. if you've oiled it). Honestly, with all due respect to the people participating here, outside of a small number of these posts, I would not treat this thread as a great source of practical information. It seems more like a mild rant followed by some gentle trolling and typical internet one-upmanship. If you want to learn about this subject it would probably be better to just search for old threads since it's been covered many times.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I would argue that the entire thread does not belong in LC.
 
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#116
dwizum said:
Many of us have been comfortable doing fingerboard coating ourselves with successful results. CA and epoxy are probably the most common choices. It's not particularly challenging, I bet you could find lots of threads if you searched in this subforum for fimgerboard coating or CA or epoxy. If it's a used fingerboard, you'll want to make sure it is clean and free of contamination, especially if you've ever put any product of any kind on it (i.e. if you've oiled it). Honestly, with all due respect to the people participating here, outside of a small number of these posts, I would not treat this thread as a great source of practical information. It seems more like a mild rant followed by some gentle trolling and typical internet one-upmanship. If you want to learn about this subject it would probably be better to just search for old threads since it's been covered many times.
Click to expand...

Agree with this as well.
I somewhat agree with @SlingBlader in that the we typically don't get the type of behavior in the LC as @dwizum indicates. So I might say it's out of place.

Trust me, I really want to put some sort of carrot statement in here, but I have refrained.
 
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#119
Beej said:
Because less than 10% of this thread contains anything relevant to the issue. He's a luthier and came to get some luthier's opinions, but it became a Basses thread with little information and a bunch of speculative peacocking... :)
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Yup. And unless I missed it, the OP never did return to post pictures.

<rant>
I gotta be honest, I'm baffled by the fact that "players" are freaked out by marks on a fretless board when using rounds. If you actually play AT ALL, the board will get marked, and yes, it will wear. To be very clear, that is NOT a problem, nor is it abnormal.

Play yer dang bass and stop worrying about keeping the board in pristine condition. When it wears to the point that it causes a problem, take it to a luthier to have it leveled. It's pretty simple. :)
</rant>
 
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