Rainsong Acoustic Guitar Fret Level Crown and Polish

In today's post I will be leveling some badly worn frets on this Rainsong acoustic.

As you can see, these frets have had a lot of playing time causing divots in the fret wire. These divots can cause all sorts of playing problems. You often get fret "buzz", and many players complain about their guitar not staying in tune. When frets have been worn this far it causes fretted notes to play out of tune. This is from the string not contacted the center of the fret wire.

First step is to tape off the entire fingerboard and only leave the fret wire exposed.

Next I mark each fret with blue marker.. This will help visualize the progress as i go.

On this guitar I decided to use my leveling beam. Different grits of sandpaper are attached to each side of the beam, a couple grits of paper will allow me to control my pace and take a little or a little more off at a time.

Here's what I've got with my first couple passes of the sanding beam.

This is a little further along in the leveling process. You can still see some of the divots showing. Once they are all sanded out, I will move on to putting a crown back in the fret wire.

Here's what the frets look like once they all have been leveled.. After leveling the frets, it leaves the top of the frets flat, so then we will be putting a crown back to the fret.

I will once again mark the frets with blue marker to see my progress as I go.... The tool in my hand has a concave shape and is diamond coated.

The idea when crowning frets is too leave a sliver of the top untouched, then come back and sand and polish them to a nice dome shape. This will assure smooth playing and good intonation.

This is the final result once they have all been sanded and polished....

Leveled, crowned, and polished frets are such an awesome thing to play on....