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question about epoxy and fretless conversion

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poomwah

Jan 26, 2008
1,235
21
#1
I have read a lot about conversions, I understand that leaving the frets unfilled weakens the neck, basically turning the neck into a piece of kerfing. Obviously, something needs to fill the slots to keep them from compressing under spring tension.
I was wondering though, could they be filled with epoxy? I would like to have an epoxy coated fretboard, would there be a downside to leveling the fretboard with the appropriate radius block, then covering the fretboard with epoxy and filling the slots?
I imagine it would be stronger than any wood I could put in there.
Or would there be issues with shrinkage?
 
#3
I de-fretted a jazz bass many years ago. I filled the gaps with wood putty and put a few coats of polyurethane on it. Unfortunately I had no idea what I was doing (and was drunk) and screwed the fret board up. Here's a guide that I wish I had at the time

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#5
Posted this in a previous thread, thought it might help you.

MattS said:
I'll share with you a few tips on how I did my fretless conversion on my acoustic bass. It came out awesome, it was alot of work.
Tools/supplies:
- soldering iron to heat up the frets for removal (cheap $5-$10 from radioshack)
- some sort of veneer, use Sauers veneer you can get it from Woodworking Plans & Tools | Fine Woodworking Project & Supplies at Woodcraft it's the perfect thickness for filling the fret gaps. I bought a pack for about $16 and it's plenty
- masking tape
- super glue or
- wood glue
- sandpaper (150, 220, 400, 600, 1000 grits)
- a japanese saw - you can get this at woodcraft.com about $30, flexible blade for cutting the extra veneer after it's glued in, you might be able to find a similar saw at home depot, but the saw I got at woodcraft is just awesome and worked very nicely.
- radius block *very important* first ya gotta find out the radius on the neck of your bass, you can look that up online most likely or find the measuring tools and can order the right block from ebay or stewmac.com, will cost about $10.

other tools/supplies that are helpful but may not be required
- fret slotting saw with depth stop ($30 from stewmac) for clearing the fret slots.
- fret pliers, you can probably use a screwdriver and some other type pliers to pull the frets out, BUT that could easily get sloppy. I think stewmac's tools are a bit overpriced, I got decent pair on ebay for $15.
- if you're using roundwound strings I highly recommend putting epoxy on the neck; marine grade epoxy, system 3 epoxy, super glue, oil based varathane, oil-based polyurthane, etc...
if you're gonna use flatwounds then coating the neck is not necessary.

Check ebay for tools.

Keep in mind to release most/all the tension of the neck before ya get to work, and that you will have to lower the action quite a bit which means re-filing the nut; I did this by putting a piece of sandpaper on the neck after smoothed and sanding the bottom of the nut on that to maintain the radius curve rather than filing away at the top and string slots which is a bit trickier.

Here are some pictures of my process. I coated the neck with oilbased polyurethane which was difficult but i'm happy with the results.


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I ended up swapping out the phosphor bronze strings and putting on flatwounds just to further protect the fretless board cuz I spent so much time on it. I wish they made flatwound phosphor bronze strings. Sounds awesome, plays awesome.
Neck is coated with polyurethane, which is quite difficult to do, but I am very happy with the results.
I plan on converting an electric to fretless in the near future, which would be much easier since I can remove the neck, but tis the slow season at my job so I'm trying not to spend money for the time being.

Here's a video of my solo project so you can hear how it sounds.
theForestRoom's Channel - YouTube

GOOD LUCK!

- Matt
Click to expand...
 
#7
I filled my fret slots with bondo, and then fine sanded and coated the board with crazy glue.

Some pics here:
http://http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f57/new-defretting-467347/#post6243298

Did that back in mid 2008. It's still perfect, no bowing, etc.

There's a couple frets that didn't come out quite as clean which have a tiny bit of squiggle from the tangs ripping out, but It's not really all that noticible unless you're looking close.

Only potential downside I see to the bondo is that your choice of colours might be a bit more limited. The hardener in my bondo was red, leading to a light pink colour. The colour is pale enough that I could easily have overpowered it with a bit of dye if I wanted another colour, but obviously white wouldn't be possible. (I've used bondo with blue hardener too, but it's almost always coloured so you can tell when you have it properly mixed)

If you're looking for something totally perfect visually, it probably isn't the way to go unless you first clean up the edges of the fret slots with a glue/dust slurry or something. If you just want something that will work well, and look reasonably decent, it's pretty cheap and easy.

If you do some searching, I think I actually put up a full thread about it somewhere.
 
#10
Arx said:
There's a bunch of unsorted pics here: Invalid Link Removed

They're all big, so I don't want to post them directly, but you can look through if you want to see the process I used.
Click to expand...

how much superglue did it take to do that? how many coats did you have to put on? did you use instrument grade superglue like the stuff that stewart mac sells? or just regular old superglue?
 
#11
It's ordinary superglue. Loctite brand iirc.

i put on a few heavy coats. I can't remember how much I used exactly. I know I bought 2 small bottles for around $5 each, and had plenty left in the second bottle, and that's including a small spill.

The last coat was way too thick and i got impatient waiting for it to cure, so I left it on the bathroom counter while I had a shower (CA cures from water vapour in the air)

if you spill any, be careful wiping it up. It'll cure super fast on the paper towell and fume up and burn.

-Nick
 
#12
BTW, don't try and speed up the curing or anything. It will get white and crusty like you can see in a couple of those photos.

In that case it was a really excessively thick coat and I knew I would be sanding it off anyway, so I didn't worry about the mess.
 
#13
.... i guess i managed a good caveman defretting then. I pulled the frets on an old Ibanez out with a pocket knife, a pair of pliers and lots of masking tape. and no damage. they weren't glued in as far as i could tell though.
 
#14
I know I'm about 2 years behind on this thread...but...when applying with the back of wet/dry sandpaper, do you focus on making it as even as possible, or sand smooth and re-coat, saving the final polished look for 2000 grain paper and buff it out?
 

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