Protect your fretboard when doing refrets, levels, polishing, etc.

The Problem

I worked on these guitars in order to put right the work that someone* had attempted and done a less-than-stellar job on. One had a lot of poorly seated frets that caused buzzing all over the place and the second problem is more 'visible'.

The first required a full refret and the second needed a fret level and some fret-glueing (although I'd dearly have liked to be able to refret again so I could do more with the scarring/scrapes).

The Tip

As you can see, one of the problems is that the fingerboard has been scarred. This happened when the previous guy failed to protect the wood before working on the frets (with files or sandpaper). This stuff's not rocket science—you can buy fretboard-guards all over the place online but even a bit of masking tape will do the trick in a pinch.

If you're ever using anything abrasive on your frets, protect the wood they live in. It's not as tough as the metal frets so spare it a thought.

The Rant

*The person who did these jobs wasn't the owner having a go at some DIY. That'd be just fine. Nope. Someone charged for this work.

This is something that gets me really, really riled up.

Weird, right? I mean, since it means more business for me, other repairers making a mess of things should make me happy.

It really, really doesn't, though.

Seriously—someone took a guy's guitar, mucked up a refret, and then charged for it. I can't get on board with that. Forget about running a business, life isn't about what you can get away with while hoping nobody notices.

Integrity, dammit! Have some damned integrity.

Turns out, there are tons of 'integrity' quotes on the web but I decided to go with mine.

The middle word wasn't 'damned' in the first version. ;-)