more adventures in guitar refretting

Hi Dante and everyone, occasional poster and full time lurker John Gzowski
here. I just finished building another guitar, with similar fretting ideas
to Dante, so I add I thought I might add my 2 cents (no pun, really). I
have already a 19 tet guitar that I had fretted by a guy with real skills,
a big instrument with the Rankin fretboards (10 strings on a stick with 40
electromagnetic strings) and a 31 tone, 5 limit electric that I refretted
(with fretlets and traditional fretwire). The last I had to have finished
by a guy with skills, as I had too many buzzing frets and dead notes. I
have also recently built a travel electric (12 tet) with piano wire
(.147") for fret wire, and a soprano electric fretted with thinner (.026")
piano wire. Both of the last I cut thin slots with a hand saw and then
crazy glued in the frets. Both of them work quite well, though there are
problems with the thinner wire I will get to in a bit.
Recently I have been working on a guitar with the complete Partch tuning
on it. For this one I decided to use thin piano wire (.026") again, 'cuz
the frets are so close together. I worked out the fret placements in
Excel, complete with fretlets and marked out the fretboard. I then cut
slots (previously I had used a fine hand saw) with a Dremel and a small
bit, using a square to keep it straight. I then crazy glued the wire in
place. The thinner piano wire, unfortunately, is always sold as a coil,
and never straightens out easily. So I ended up clamping the wire on both
ends to keep it in place with spring clamps. Occasionally they spring up
and I glue them down again, though that mostly stopped after the first few
days. The biggest problem is that the ends were all quite sharp and the
heights a little uneven (from problems with the grain against the dremel
bit). So I took a file over the whole neck and brought all the frets down
a bit, some ended up with slightly squared tops, but they still play
comfortably and in tune. For the ends I just globbed down some 5 minute
epoxys to cover over the sharp bits. The frets now all work and play very
comfortably. The fret height is very low, but feels fine. It doesn't look
very pretty but works well, and doesn't require much in the way of tools
or skills. My biggest problem is just learning how to play the thing, it
takes more accuracy than the fretless instruments I play (oud, fretless
guitar) since the wrong notes are definitely wrong and plenty.

by the way nice technical notes on your page Dante, very clear.