Best method to repair tearout on rosewood fretboard.

[Kevin Stephen]

I have a rosewood fretboard that has several spots, well...... a lot of spots, that chipped out when I pulled the frets out. The brittle rosewood could not handle the abuse & now I need to fill the damaged spots. Don't have pictures right now, but most of the chips are about 1/8" or less long & maybe 1/16" deep & 1/16" wide. Some deeper & wider. Should I use a wood glue/sawdust filler? Any insight on this is appreciated.

Thanks,
kev

[John Hamlett]

Best to glue the pieces that chipped out back in place. (Masking tape pressed down next to the frets helps keep pieces of chippy fingerboards aligned for re-gluing, for future reference.) If you no longer have the pieces, rosewood dust mixed with glue or epoxy is probably your best bet. Lots of very fine dust, not much glue; as much dust as the glue will take.

[Greg Robinson]

I have a rosewood fretboard that has several spots, well...... a lot of spots, that chipped out when I pulled the frets out. The brittle rosewood could not handle the abuse & now I need to fill the damaged spots. Don't have pictures right now, but most of the chips are about 1/8" or less long & maybe 1/16" deep & 1/16" wide. Some deeper & wider. Should I use a wood glue/sawdust filler? Any insight on this is appreciated.

Thanks,
kev

Hi Kev,
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Thanks.

[Dave Gentner]

Stewmac sells a Teflon sheet that you can put in the fret slot. You then fill your chip outs with rosewood dust and a drop of CA glue. After it hardens you can easily remove the Teflon and sand the board.

[Kevin Stephen]

Stewmac sells a Teflon sheet that you can put in the fret slot. You then fill your chip outs with rosewood dust and a drop of CA glue. After it hardens you can easily remove the Teflon and sand the board.

Thanks, that sounds like a great solution.

Thanks,
kev

[Thomas Wentzel]

I'll the echo the success of the teflon shims, and dust/glue method. Once sanded you won't even see the chip out. Not sure how you approached the fret removal, but prevention of chips is your best tool, like heating and careful pulling from one end to the other is a good suggestion. But the one thing that's helped me most with avoiding lots of chips is to take a brand new i.e. sharp single-edge razor blade and 'score' along each side of the fret before heating/removal. I can remove all the frets on a board, most of the time, with nary a chip out. Another idea is to lay a piece of tape along each side of the fret, then if chip-out occurs, the chips stick to the tape and can be laid right back in and glued. (I see John referenced this above)
One other tip..before replacing the frets, make sure no glue/dust gathered on the bottom of the fret slot or your fret will sit proud..ask me how I know this! I use a tool that I made to clean the slots and then remove the burrs/tangs from a piece of fret wire I'm using, bend it to an 'L' shape, and use it as a depth gauge in each slot before the refret..
Just some solutions to issues I've encountered learning refretting..good luck.
Tom

[Mark Wybierala]

Normally, I just use the black CA sold by stewmac. It blends into the regular black speckles of most rosewood and you'd really need to know what you were looking for to be able to identify the repairs. I have this on hand when I pull frets so I can put those little tear out pieces back into place if and when they happen. With accellerator and the black CA on hand, repairing tearout on the spot hardly slows down the process of pulling the frets. If the pieces are missing and they are large enough to warrant using donor pieces, using the black CA can make even the most feeble attempt at shaping a donor piece look fine.

[John Hamlett]

I used to keep black superglue around, but I always ended up throwing away well over half of it because i couldn't use a whole bottle before it hardened in the bottle. Now I make my own by mixing powdered lamp black into 'regular' superglue. For inlay filler and fingerboard repairs on ebony 'boards, packing the void with lamp black powder then flooding with superglue works well and saves mixing the glue/lampblack before using it, but since this is a rosewood 'board, that leads me right back to my first post in this thread; rosewood dust and glue/epoxy. The only extra step is making some dust, and if there's one thing I have a lot of experience with, it's making dust.