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Chip’s guitar maintenance tip this time is regarding the care of your fretboard – yes cleaning your guitar fretboard is unavoidable…

Cleaning your guitar fretboard

Guitar owners often tell me about the various things they do to “take care”
of their guitar fingerboards. “I got this Arkansas sharpening stone, I hone
’em down with that thing”. “I rub lemon oil into it every month”.
Occasionally, people actually ask me what I do to take care of my guitar
fingerboards.

First, if there is any question about the actual function of the truss rod,
or the condition of the frets and related playability, leave that to
someone you trust in a repair shop. Some of my most frustrating repair jobs
have involved instruments that were “fixed up” by their owners.

Assuming, however, that everything is looking and playing well, and that
you as an owner are just looking to do some maintenance (and I encourage
that), here is some advice. Much of what I do is based on what I was taught
by Roger Borys and Jimmy D’Aquisto.

Before I outline a quick polishing and lubricating procedure, here are a
couple of things to avoid. D’Aquisto felt that lemon oil, or any other
vegetable based oil, could literally rot the wood as it decomposed while
saturated into the wood cells and pores of a fingerboard. He,
interestingly, used to use motor oil (yes, that’s right, he preferred
non-detergent {less additives}, and 30 or 40 weight oil was fine with him).
Frankly, it freaks people out when they see their repairman put a bit of
motor oil on their instrument. I use clarinet bore oil, which is also a
petroleum product available in most music stores. I figure if it can help
a cylindrical, temperamental, tropical hardwood reed instrument, with
someone breathing heavily through it, it will be just fine for a guitar
fretboard. D’Aquisto, and other luthiers, also warn against using silicone
based lubricants on guitars.

When I polish up a fingerboard, here is what I do. To eliminate scratches,
little dings from slide guitar playing, finger gunge (technical term) and
light playing wear, I will take a small piece of 400 grit sandpaper, spread
a little oil (a few drops) on it, and then lightly sand the frets across
the fretboard. Then a little piece of 500 or 600 grit paper, and then a
piece of 0000 steel wool, all with a bit of oil as a lubricant, and to pick
up dirt and dust. Take a soft cloth, clean the surrounding finish, and
carefully wipe down the fingerboard, getting any excess oil and residue off
of it.

If your sanding motion is up and down the fingerboard, you will leave
minute scratches in the fret that will make it harder to bend strings
smoothly. Try to get any crud from between the frets, but don’t lean into
the wood too hard; you don’t want to change the basic level of the
fingerboard. If you do this a couple of times a year, that’s enough. If you
are a person who leaves a lot of finger gunge (it’s sweat and body oil
soaked dirt, really) on the board, clean it more frequently than that.

a clean fretboard

0000 steel wool leaves the frets and the wood nicely polished. If you would
like to polish the frets to a higher gleam, a small buffing wheel on a
Dremel tool, carefully and judiciously used with some buffing compound, can
bring up a higher polish. Make sure the strings are off and well away from
the Dremel tool, and don’t overdo it: you don’t want to heat up the fret
too much. It may loosen in the fret slot, especially on a refretted guitar.

Beware of this procedure on a cheap, painted fretboard. The paint will
certainly wear away in a few strokes.

Uhhhh, oh, yeah… restring and play!

I have a website: http://www.jumpinsomethin.com.
Guitar fanatics may enjoy seeing the photos of some of the guitars I have built, as well as my “collection”, which includes a few guitars I would never build, but just like to play. Hope you enjoy it, and feel free to get in touch via email: Chip Wilson at: Contact Chip


Musician/luthier Chip Wilson lives in New Orleans, LA. Chip worked with
Borys Guitars when master archtop builder James L. D’Aquisto served as a
consultant, before opening his own business, Better Guitars. Better Guitars
served as an authorized repair shop for most of the top US guitar
manufacturers. Chip wrote a book review for Guitarmaker, the
quarterly publication of ASIA.

Chip is now primarily a performer in New Orleans, typically playing 25 to
30 gigs per month, as a soloist, sideman, and with his own band A Jumpin’
Somethin’. His 1999 release “A Jumpin’ Somethin” was nominated for Best
Traditional Jazz CD By A Louisiana Artist by Offbeat Magazine, the most
widely distributed Louisiana music publication. His most recent release was the album “Constantinople” in 2009.

Chip’s article first appeared in Vermont guitar store GuitarSam’s eZine: www.guitarsam.com

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