Gluing in frets?

[Rob Roy]

For the seasoned veteran builders I beg your wisdom:

I have recently refretted an older Rigel mandolin that had already been refretted a few times, so the slots were a little ragged. This instrument has carbon reinforcement instead of a truss rod and the fingerboard had some serious upcurve going at both ends so I had to level it first. The owner hits hard and played regularly enough in the past that he was going through a set of frets every 5 years. His research lead him to EVO gold and I put in the 0.080" bead EVO to match the nickel/silver that was in it. I've used this same wire on 4 other mandolins which all came out fine. The Rigel is a compound radius so I pretty much had custom bend each fret before setting them. Even with the worn slots, the new frets had enough grab that they took the usual amount of hammering to set. While dressing the ends I discovered that a couple of them needed a touch of CA at the ends.

To make a long story short, the owner has jacked up the action on the treble side considerably and still is not happy with the tone. While not out-and-out buzzing, many notes are not ringing clearly. This is with the action on the E string at almost 0.080"! Two factors are at play. The owner plays with a very strong attack. The other is that there is only 0.002" of relief in the neck. He had a lengthy conversion with Pete Langdell who tells him that the relief needs to be in the range of 0.007 to 0.009" of an inch, which seems like a lot for a mandolin to me. With no truss rod, I'm now in the position of sanding relief into the frets with a short block, which gives me the hebee gebees. In working on this instrument this morning, I discovered a 3rd fret that is loose, so loose I was able to lift it out of the slot with my fingers. Yikes, it is glued in now.

So my big question in all of this is: should I have glued all the frets in? Would the glue improve the tone? I've not been in the habit of gluing all frets in, but I haven't encountered fret slots this worn before. I recently also refretted an old Stelling for the same customer, and the slots had some type of white glue in the bottom, perhaps fish glue. The bridge on the Rigel was also overextended for a long time and the top saddle portion leans over a good deal. I lobbied for a Cumberland replacement but the customer was happy with the tone he was getting with the original bridge.

I know some builders always glue in frets. I've avoided it because I know the next guy is going to have to heat the frets to get them out and and then deal with cleaning out the slots before refretting. What say you veterans who've been doing this a long time? To glue or not to glue?

[Jim Hilburn]

I liked Bennedetto's method which was to use Titebond. It was easy to clean up with a damp cloth and as Bob pointed out, Titebond doesn't really adhere to the frets, it just forms around them to hold them in place. It breaks down with heat when it's time to remove them.
I didn't do much re-fretting but it worked well for me.

[pops1]

Loose frets will cause buzzing. Seeing that you can lift one I would glue them in. Cold hide glue is a good glue for this, but you could wick CA in. I like to clamp the frets if wicking CA for a minute or two to make sure they are seated. If the owner still has buzzing you could sand in relief, you have enough fret height as they are new and they won't wear so it shouldn't be a problem, but I would glue them in first and make sure you have the snug fit they need.

[Dale Ludewig]

I glue mine in on new and refrets, with watery CA. I also pretty much only use EVO so it will be a long time before they'd need to be pulled back out. I just put them in without glue, arbor press when possible. Then a little line of CA with a pipette, excess wiped off immediately. It wicks down in there and you're done except for possible a little clean up with a razor blade. If you and your customer don't see eye to eye on this or anything else, you are the one doing the work and if you don't feel comfortable at being held accountable for doing something you don't want to do, just tell them so. Try to make sure you do this before you get in too deep.
As far as relief goes, if you level the frets under no tension, I can't imagine that the string tension won't pull the neck enough to give you adequate space.

[Richard500]

I may be off in the land of minor effects here, but I think the physics points toward the frets being as rigidly attached to the fingerboard as possible, so that no string energy passes by. That is, a low-impedance connection to a large mass.
If the rest of the string can vibrate, the various string modes will be different, even if the part toward the nut doesn’t couple to the bridge. Think of a fretted 1st harmonic vs. the just touched one. Or a nut made of soft material.
Makes me think about those many mostly Asian instruments where each string has its own bridge. And that’s enough to send me to the couch for a nap.

[Tom Haywood]

What has me curious is 1) was a new nut installed?, and 2) how did 3 frets become that loose from the time they were installed until this morning? (Not sure how long that has been.) I don't glue frets, unless individual ones will not stay down. So far that has been rare. I haven't noticed any tonal differences. I do check the seating after installing each fret by trying to get a fingernail under the fret all along it's length. This tells me if the slot is not quite deep enough. If the slot is too wide and the fret moves, it gets some glue - CA so far. If it's a new nut, then the dull sound could be a nut slot issue. Hard to generalize without knowing which notes are not ringing and hearing what the actual sound is. I have found it useful on occasion to draw a fret board on paper and mark the questionable notes to see what the pattern is. Good luck!

[Nevin]

In what kind of condition is the fretboard wood?

[Tavy]

One other data point: playing cleanly with a high action is near on impossible, it's possible the action has been jacked up so much that it's no longer possible to get clean notes even on a perfect fretboard. Just my 2c...

[rcc56]

I have been using Titebond liquid hide glue for frets for 20 years. Over the course of 100 + fret jobs done this way, I have only had 3 or 4 loose frets come to my attention. When it's time to pull them when the frets finally wear out, it lets go easily with heat from a soldering iron, which I always use to lift frets anyway, no matter who put them in.

Do I think glue has any effect on tone? Not directly, but frets that are well-seated are a requirement for the best tone, no matter whether they have been glued or not. The glue lubricates the fret as you drive it, and the squeeze-out helps you to tell when it has seated well.

I have re-fretted quite a few instruments that had soft old rosewood fretboards with worn slots. The best solution I know for this is to use extra care driving the frets, and to use Stew-mac's fret tang crimping tool when necessary. In the old days, we used to ding up the tang of a fret with a chisel to get it to bite a little better. I still do this occasionally if the crimping tool doesn't work out. If any slots are wallowed out very badly, it is occasionally necessary to fill and re-cut them. I have done this with thin wooden strips or CA and the appropriate sawdust. I usually get better results with wood strips.

If you're having trouble getting frets to seat well, make your first pass with a hardwood block between the fret and the hammer, and work your way across slowly and gradually [thank you, Hazel Johnson]. On a difficult board, repeat, then chase with the hammer alone. I now use the block 90% of the time when I drive frets, I get better results that way. The extra time it takes is made up for time saved on re-doing frets that do not seat well. I consider this step essential for a board that doesn't want to hold a fret.

I only use CA for the occasional loose fret end for a quick repair on an existing fret job. I do not use it in my re-fret work, except for patching fingerboard dents or adding wood to a badly wallowed fret slot.

The only other thing I'll say is that if the owner is slamming the instrument and the mandolin sounds all right when played with a normal attack, he may never be satisfied with your work. It would be your responsibility to make sure that your frets have indeed been seated and levelled correctly, but if the work is well done, there is a limit to what else you can do.

In such a case, I might consider offering him some or all of his money back rather that spending hours pulling your own frets, trying to find the "perfect relief" [which I don't necessarily agree with] for the board, and re-fretting again. Sometimes it is better to quit and take a loss rather than get in deeper. But I will add that I have only had to do that once or twice over 30 years of repairing instruments.

[Rob Roy]

Thanks for the cumulative wisdom all. I did sand about 0.004" relief (untensioned) into the frets and then leveled a small hump around frets 12-14 and strung it up for a test before spending the time to recrown and sand and polish. For added insurance I wicked thin CA under the first 12 frets, not ideal but hopefully may ward off any problems down the road. I also replaced the bridge with an old Randy Wood Pat Pending bridge I had laying around which made a huge difference in the sound. The mando is sounding clear and LOUD and the owner is thrilled. I will pass on any other work on a mando without a truss rod going forward. Good health to all :-)

[rcc56]

Odds are that the hump was causing a lot of the problems.
I find it essential to get a fingerboard as true as possible before driving any frets. That, and a good firm seat on every fret are the recipe for good results. If that is done well, very little levelling will be necessary after the frets are installed.

If you're going to re-fret many instruments, sooner or later you will have to learn to negotiate instruments built without adjustable rods, among them any Gibson mandolin made before 1921, and all Martin guitars made before 1985.

I just finished up a job on a 1980 Martin, and had to estimate how much to take off the nut end of the fingerboard to compensate for the amount of extraneous relief that had developed. After you've done a few, you get the hang of it.

[Rob Roy]

The only other thing I'll say is that if the owner is slamming the instrument and the mandolin sounds all right when played with a normal attack, he may never be satisfied with your work. It would be your responsibility to make sure that your frets have indeed been seated and levelled correctly, but if the work is well done, there is a limit to what else you can do.

In such a case, I might consider offering him some or all of his money back rather that spending hours pulling your own frets, trying to find the "perfect relief" [which I don't necessarily agree with] for the board, and re-fretting again. Sometimes it is better to quit and take a loss rather than get in deeper. But I will add that I have only had to do that once or twice over 30 years of repairing instruments.

Thanks for your response. When I first leveled the fretboard and refretted, the frets came out dead flat with my ground leveling beam. Considering how much the neck had curved over time, I expected string tension would give me the tiny amount of relief needed. Nope. The maddening thing about the neck is that, in the short term, the carbon reinforcement gives not at all. But I know it will over time. Indeed, in the span of time between the first and second times I worked on it (1-2 weeks), the geometry changed slightly down by the heel !?!

I agree that the notion of wanting to be able to hit really hard on an instrument with normal action and still get clean, ringing notes is unrealistic. I did offer him $175
to take it to someone else who has the experience and finesse to dial in a fingerboard without a truss rod. He wanted me to take on more pass at it. So after another 4 hours of work, he has an instrument he is very happy with and I learned some valuable lessons. I'm definitely sold on truss rods!

[Ward Elliott]

This sounds like a situation where the thicker tanged EVO fret wire can really help. It’s mandolin sized wire (.053”) with a tang thickness of .230”. It allows you to do a compression refret on a mandolin with mandolin sized fret wire. Pair it with the fret barber tool or a homemade version, and you can adjust the tang thickness to really stiffen a neck. Once a fretboard has been refretted a couple times and the slot is worn, the best you can hope for with standard sized fretwire is that it won’t pop up on the ends without gluing it in. But it’s not really stiffening the neck if it fits that loosely, and it takes a lot of carbon fiber to make up for that effect. I can usually get a neck just right with a combination of leveling, compression fretting, and careful fret leveling, whether it’s got neck reinforcement or not. Don’t always get it right on the first try, and if the fret slots are REALLY worn there’s not much you can do unless there’s a working truss rod, or you replace the fretboard.

[Ward Elliott]

It can be very frustrating trying to satisfy players who insist on playing that hard. Some guys can get fret buzz and other distortion no matter how high the action is.