Hammering Mandolin Frets

> The fret to fret distance in a mandolin is so small that there is a good
> chance of cracking the wood just from the sideways force of pressing a
> fret into the slot.

Is that then equally big a concern for small step sizes on a guitar?

It would seem though that, as long as you use a fret saw precisely matched to the
width of the roots of the fret wire, you'd only be pressuring the wood for the size
of the barbs that hold the fret in. That would seem to be very little pressure on
the wood, unless your frets are not much more further apart than a couple widths of
the fret wire, which is clearly not going to be playable by anybody (with the
possible exception of superwiz like Neil Haverstick!). Or to draw an analogy, even
a soft wood like pine rarely cracks if you drill a pilot hole for a screw that
matches the inside diameter of the threads.