Semi-Hemispherical fret work

[Doug Davis]

I have a friend and fellow builder ask me recently about how this type of fret end treatment is done?

anyone using this style and care to provide a walk-thru?

thanks in advance.

[Dave Stewart]

In general terms, the frets are prep'd & cut to exact length and the the ends are rounded/polished before installing on the fingerboard. There's quite a bit out there......... several youtubes & sites. (Alan Dunwell did quite an extensive paper, depending on how deeply you want to get into it). One good approach I heard was making a sister fretboard, with bit oversized slots & a fence clamped along one edge. Dress one end of all frets & place in the sister & run a file down the other edge to file all frets to perfect length. Cool!

[David Malicky]

Here's our process for student-project guitars, starting around 3:20 in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpZSwsHQ9eU
The sanding jig shown is great if you have many necks to make. For just a few necks: cut them long, square and dress one end of each fret, lay in the slot with the dressed end ~1/32" inboard of the edge, magic marker the other end 1/32" inboard (or flush), then cut/sand and dress that end. We make them short so they don't stick out in low humidity. Start with the longest frets: if you sand one too short, just shift it to the next shorter slot. To polish the ends, use finer grit paper, up to 600 or so, probably easiest on a RO sander. A true hemisphere is harder to make than it seems--fortunately it's not necessary, just that they're all a similar shape.

[Steve Senseney]

Is this considered different than the "bullet" type of end dressing of the fret?

[Waddy Thomson]

I think it's about the same. I tried it for a while, but it's really hard to get them all just right, and have an even look down the fretboard. After going to GFA and seeing all the guitars there, I decided to quit doing it, as, it seems, that I was the only one doing it, and no one seemed to notice. It's a lot of work and a lot of extra time fretting, 3 - 4 extra hours the way I was doing it, dressing each one by hand.

[Greg Robinson]

Waddy, what's "GFA"?
Please try and remember folks, we're not all familiar with acronyms, so please spell it out, at least once, then you can go on using acronyms with no potential for confusion.

[Waddy Thomson]

I'm sorry! Old habits die hard! GFA refers to the annual Convention and International Classical Guitar Competition of the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA). At this event, they have a Vendor Fair, with about 30 or so Luthiers present, showing their wares. I had a table there with three guitars. All of them had the hemispherical fret ends. Bad picture, but, it's all I have.

[Greg Robinson]

Thanks Waddy.

[Randy Roberts]

I had a tutorial on the old forum just before it closed on a method of doing these. I looked but that section is gone now (Deb really is hard at work). I'd be glad to E-mail you a copy of it if I had any idea of how to find your E-mail on this new forum. My E-mail is entered on my control panel page, but I don't know how you're supposed get to it. If you can figure that out, contact me and I'll send the original posting to you.
I could reconstruct it and repost it here but I assume that might end up with two of the same thing in the archives once the old forum data migrates over here, so I'm assuming I shouldn't do that.

[Steven Smith]

I've also done several this way. Most I got out of anyone was "oh, that's cool". Like Waddy says, it takes a lot of extra time. I'm not planning on doing any more that way.

[Waddy Thomson]

I mentioned it to one guy trying out one of my guitars. He said, "Oh, I didn't see that.", and continued to try it out. Never mentioned it again. I don't think I saw another example of it in the 100 +, Luthier built guitars that were there for sale. Greg Byers sure doesn't do it.

[Tom Harper]

I do a close enough approximation to hemispherical ends that they look the same, but take less time. I cut the frets to the appropriate size, then sand the end at a 45 degree, 22.5 degree and 67.5 degree angle to a vertically oriented circular sander using fine grit sand paper. The angles are estimated by eye, and I roll the fret at the sander. It takes a little practice, but results in a pretty close approximation that is cleaned up with very little file work and the fret polishing.

The hard part is getting the fret to seat in exactly the correct spot. The tangs often want to slide the fret a little one direction or the other, so you have to be careful with the first few taps. I suppose glue ins with no tangs would make life easier.

I developed this technique the easy way - stealing it from Howard Klepper in the days he contributed here.

Although I still dress frets this way, part of me agrees with Waddy. I am not sure semi-hemispherical ends are the sine qua non of a desirable instrument. Every time I do them, I think of Fred Carlsons' rebuttal to a Guild of American Luthiers journal article about semi-hemispherical fret ends in which he argues for gargoyles on the end. Now that would be cool.

[Chuck Morrison]

From many long years ago comes the memory that this kind of fret end was used on high end guitars from a certain US based maker with the same initials as mine. They bound fretboards and notched the frets to overlap the binding and polished them off nicely. The other large US builder of the time bound fretboards too, but angled the binding along with the frets. Personally I could always feel the rounded frets too much. I did a similar kind of fret end on a guitar recently and another (older than I even) builder criticised it as having a shrinking fretboard, which wasn't the case. So I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't like feeling the ends of the frets. They look nice though.

[Waddy Thomson]

I believe it would be much more "cool" on a Steel String with a bound fretboard. Classical players don't seem to be stirred!

[Greg Robinson]

Chuck, do you mean C.F. Martin? You can mention brand names here.

[Murray MacLeod]

I developed this technique the easy way - stealing it from Howard Klepper in the days he contributed here.

Howard doesn't do semi-hemispherical fret ends, in fact he doesn't even approve of the terminology...

I still maintain that semi-hemispherical fret ends, or an approximation thereof, done properly, give you more real estate on the top of the fret, and that is a vital consideration.

[Tom Harper]

Hmmm, I was certain it was Howard that talked about doing them on the sander, but I have a number of crystal clear memories that turn out to be wrong these days. As to terminology, I don't doubt that he finds fault with "semi-hemispherical".

[Ryan Mazzocco]

perhaps this is splitting hairs... but wouldn't it really be a quarter-sphere anyway?

[Bill Raymond]

That would be hemi-demispherical.

[Waddy Thomson]

Maybe you count both ends!