Some people use a jig to set it up under playing type tensions, I don’t but then again I’m far from a perfectionist .
Next I tape the adjoining finished areas with low tack tape so as not to pull the finish up.
It has a sweet tiger maple neck, total win! For the fingerboard I use a stronger tape and get everything covered, its a dirty process. After its covered I mark the fret tops to help gauge the leveling.
My leveling bar is a machinists level with 400 grit sandpapered glued to the surface, it’s what I have lying around but I’ve used everything from wood to sharpening plates, it just has to be flat. The machinists level has the right heft to do the job, I don’t put any downward pressure , I just keep it inline and check frequently to see when all the frets have been touched.
At this point the leveling is complete, I wipe it down with Naptha and remark it for the crowning. I bought a good crowning file but I have done it with everything from a homemade safe file( it has the edges ground off) to an old school fret file( I bought it in the ‘90’s) to this Stew Mac diamond version, worth every penny.
The object here is the remove and round over the sides of the fret but leave a small “land” on the top for the string to reference when you fret it.
Some of the frets are exactly perfectly landed, some aren’t. These G&L frets were nice and tall to start with, @.055 to .060. and wide and flat and I really had to grind the sides downs. That’s it for crowning. I wipe it down again and after each polishing stage, here’s the pads I use now but I’ve used wet/ dry sandpaper and emery boards in the past.
That’s it, it took about an hour and a half total time. Its not a difficult job but can be a little intimidating if you’re doing it for the
first time and aside from the crowning file doesn’t require a huge outlay of tools and materials. Hope this helped somebody visualize a common guitar maintenance job. Enjoy on a cold ass winter Sunday!
