I'm, using an Cumaru fretboard, stuff used for building rail tracks back in the day, it just happens to be too open pored (something I didn't took into consideration) it has a high natural luster and a "waxy" feel, I heard from a friend that you can finish furniture with beewax, so I decided to rub a piece of solid bee-wax on the first fret (we are talking of an unfretted and 400grit polished fretboard with no finish) but the result was messy, the solid beewax didn't do much, so I decided to clean it with alcohol.
and that was quite of an smart idea, apparently the alcohol denaturated the wax protein structure (chemically melted) and it filled the pores quite nicely and removed the excess wax without a problem, I touched the fretboard and it was more slinky than before, it used to happen that after using alcohol in the cumaru, the pores get cleaned and you could feel the grainy surface, I decided to double boil a jar of wax, cover the whole thing and rub it in the pores so I could fill the nasty pores.
I "wet sanded" (dont kill me if I used the term wrong) with a 1200 grit with alcohol as a lubricant and that grinded the remaining wax and also polished the wood even more, finally got a pass of 1200grit with no alcohol (was to remove a whitish powder the alcohol leaves) in the end the result was killing, it shines quite a lot, looks completely natural like it has no finish but with a very slinky feel, I'm almost sure you could finish an entire instrument this way.
I will add some linseed oil when the frets are in place, I repeat, please, don't do it with the frets on, I actually have the last 5 frets on and it was twice as messy on that area.
I have the feel that there is some sort of liquid wax on sale that can make this process way more efficient, I promise to put some pictures when I can, for now the fretboard feels twice as fast and I hope it will remain that way.
so, any opinion on this, I'm as stupid as I think I am? I bet I do
