This week one of the jobs I was asked to do was a level, crown and polish on this Vespa Maniac. So why do I charge $250 for this?
There will be a video at some point of the whole process, but let me take you through the 4 hours plus that this job took.
As you can see I tape up the whole fret board and also cover over the body, to prevent metal filings from getting near the pickups or electronics. This is after taking measurements and notes of the current set up and string gauges.
Level
I Adjust the neck relief, to bring the neck straight. Then I mark the tops of all the frets with permanent marker.
With a levelling beam and fine grit abrasive, I gently begin levelling all frets to the same height. Once every fret shows evidence of abrasion, they are level. In this case I needed to keep going until the grooves, you can see on the frets, were reduced enough that they would polish out.
Crown
Once level, each fret is marked again.
now one by one, and each side in turn, the sides of the fret are filed to 45°, until the marker line on the fret top is less than 1mm thick across the full length of the fret.
Polish
Now we have a set of level frets crowned to a consistent intonation point it's time to remove the file marks and bring the frets to a mirror finish.
beginning with 400 or 600 grit abrasive paper, the frets are sanded, firstly, along the fret board, at right angles to the file marks, then across the fretboard, to remove any remaining file marks on the crown from levelling.
now I work up the grits, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 in turn along then across the fretboard, removing the marks from the previous abrasion.
finally I begin polishing, with a buffing wheel, careful not to catch the fret end and rip the fret out of the board. Two passes of increasingly finer polish.
The final polish is by hand with chrome polish, the satisfaction of seeing each fret reach that perfect mirror finish never gets old.
Clean and set up
Once the protective paper is off, the fretboard can be cleaned and then it can be oiled, as cleaning removes dirt from the wood, but leaves the wood dry and unprotected.
Finally the strings go back on, the neck relief is reset and the action is checked and adjusted now that the fret height is a little lower.
So there you have it. It takes me around 4 hours depending on how worn the frets are and what they are made of, to level, crown and polish a guitar. The response from the owner of the Vespa was "It's never looked that good before, even when new". So while there might be other ways of doing the work, this is my way and I hope you agree, the results are pretty good.
Have a great week,
Richard
