Did I "over level" my frets

[HogTime]

While my 8 coats of KTM-9 are curing on my long drawn out F5 project, I'm finishing the fretwork. I checked with a fret rocker and I still need to do some leveling.

However, I'm a bit worried I shouldn't lower the frets much (if any) more. I compared my current height (fretboard to top of fret) to my Collings MT and '84 Flatiron A5Jr. Don't know when they were last re-fretted, but I do know the Flatiron had worn frets when I bought it and I had them "cleaned up". The Collings appears to have at least 10 mils higher frets than my F5 and the Flatiron around 8.

To measure the fret height, I put a fret rocker across 2 frets and slid a feeler gauge under the rocker. My F5 is around 28 to 30 mils for the first 6 frets. This is the farthest I could go with the width of the feeler gauges. According to my notes, after my first pass of leveling I had about 33 mils of height, although I was measuring it a different way (digital caliper, which seemed to vary with placement).

Funny thing is that the specs on the fret wire I got with my Siminoff F5 kit, say the fret height is only 25 mils. Do frets usually sit above the fretboard some? I thought I "whacked" them in pretty good.

So, the question is: Should I continue to level more? If so, what's the minimum fret height, before crowning, that's acceptable?

Thanks,

[Tavy]

Ideally when you level the frets you take them all down to match the height of the lowest fret - unless you bashed some of the frets in crazy hard the lowest fret should be the height of the fretwire you used, so the possibility of going too low never arises.

So the questions I would ask are: 1) was the board absolutely level before you started? If not I would probably start again. 2) Do all the frets have flat tops on them from the leveling? If yes, then why do you need to do more? If no, then why not - did you bash some in too hard maybe?

You also need to remember (and this may be more important than fret height), that you don't want to remove so much material from the tops that all the frets end up "square" - you'll find it next to impossible to get a decent crown on them all, and the angular profile won't be so nice for playing on. If one or two "difficult" ones end up that way, that's acceptable, but you'll have to work hard on those particular ones to get the crown right.

In other words you want everything as level as possible at each stage, so only a minimal amount of leveling is required. At least that's the ideal ;)

Also remember that if this is your first fret job, it'll be OK, but not as perfect as it could be - you just get better with practice, and there are sadly no shortcuts to obtaining that!

[HogTime]

Thanks for the info.

Since I am finding high frets with a fret rocker, that's why I think I need more leveling. Will watch out for square frets, though.

[Tavy]

Thanks for the info.

Since I am finding high frets with a fret rocker, that's why I think I need more leveling. Will watch out for square frets, though.

One other point: if you're taking material off all the frets, but you're still finding high frets, then you may have a problem with whatever you're using to level them. Generally folks use the rocker to check for frets that aren't well pushed in before leveling. The leveling is really just the last bit of flattening off. Check out this essay on frets.com (http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier/Technique/Guitar/Frets/00028Refret/00028refret02.html) if you haven't already.

[Folkmusician.com]

Also check that the frets are seated well. If not, they can push down when the leveler hits them and pop back up later.

[mirwa]

I suspect if the frets sit higher of the board than the manufacturers listing of the fret height, then when you fitted the fret, either the fret slot was not deep enough, or you did not vee the top of your fret slots and you actually have small sections of wood holding the frets above the wood

That or the frets are just not in place properly and are already lifting out.