Have you ever...?

[Brian Evans]

A fun one and a bad one...

Have you ever been happily sanding away tool marks and scratches on your slightly figured maple neck, spent 10 minutes working on one section, put your "up close" glasses on and realize you are trying to sand out quite nice grain?

Have you ever been putting the finishing touches on a fretboard, getting the radius just right and cleaning out the fret slots of accumulated sanding dust and such, and putting a few passes of the fret saw through each fret slot to make sure the depth is right, found a slot half filled with shellac'd in sawdust so that you need to be fairly aggressive with the saw, completed the fret job, dressed all the frets, and then taken a close look at that stubborn fret? Only to find that in cleaning out the slot the saw wandered a few thou off course and the fret has a 10 thou or so curve at one end? Now I have to decide if I dress it out or pull the fret, fill the slot, recut, and hope I can get it square with a tapered fretboard.

Good days and bad days.