Mandolin Fret Replacement

Refretting / Fret Replacement- My method of refretting is commonly referred to as the "compression method". By this I mean that the frets are pressed or tapped into the fingerboard as opposed to being epoxied in oversized slots.
Vintage mandolins require a great deal of patience and personally I see them as being the most time consuming and delicate of refrets, especially if the fingerboard is bound. The fret wire used on Mandolins is small and old ebony fingerboards are commonly dry and brittle. This brittle state means the board is likely to chip when the frets are removed and great care must be taken to prevent and repair any chip out.

How is done? Click here.

Bound fingerboards create the greatest challenge, especially if the board or neck is warped and must be planed. When a vintage mandolin suffers from far too much relief (bow) and has no adjustable truss rod they sometimes require fingerboard planeing in order to flatten the fingerboard. Depending on the amount of planeing necessary the fret slots may then require deepening.
Why does binding create a challenge? The binding that runs along the edge of the neck seals the edge of the fingerboard (and fret slot) and prevents using a normal saw to simply cut thru each fret slot. Using a saw is a dangerous proposition and puts you at great risk of accidentally cutting thru the binding. Instead, the slots must be deepened and scraped of old glue with other tools which equates to a time consuming and delicate repair.
Because of the time and skill required to properly refret most older vintage mandolins with a dry or brittle boards I have seen quite a few come in my shop in awful shape. I've seen quite a few with excessive chip out that was left unrepaired announcing the fact that the instrument has been refretted with one glance.

Fret Leveling (Fret Mill, L&D)-  Usually when frets need to be leveled it's because one or more of them is too high and causing a buzz. High or low spots can be caused by simple wear (notches in the fret wire where the strings eventually create a groove) or even loose frets which have sprung free from the board.
One common symptom of a fret level problem would be.... when playing at say the 5th fret, you hear a buzz, but once you have moved further up the neck, like the 6th or 7th fret, the buzzing is gone. Fret buzz that is located in one centralized fret is often an indication of a high (or low) fret.
This may happen if one or more frets are not seated securely, become loose and spring up or, if the instrument is new or newly refretted, they may not have received the attention needed.

It is also not uncommon for people to "discover" a problem with the instruments frets once the action has been lowered. Why? Because high action can cover a multitude of sins. It's not uncommon for players to bring in new instruments to have the action adjusted, and on some import and less expensive mandolins the action straight from the factory can be nearly unplayable. While this may be an oversight or short cut it can also help to disguise poor fret work. The closer the strings lie to the frets, the more critical it becomes that all tolerances are kept.