I don't have a long meter stick just a yard stick in inches. I am using a micrometer to mark fret to fret and then use the micrometer almost maxed out to check about 5 frets in a row. The problem is that after I check the 12th fret at 12.5 iches and it is off only about 1/32 or the thickness of a business card. The scale is 25inches with 20 frets. I already installed the first fret and it is accurate and then marked the rest. I rest the very edge of the micrometer on the center of the mark. I am prepared to remark but would hope that this will not be a problem. I marked the 12th fret before I marked the rest just to have a measuring point. The face of the fret wire will pretty much cover what is off so it is very slightly off. Will this be a problem?

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Get yourself a metre steel rule and measure each fret from the nut.that way you don't compound any errors.Or make a fretting jig if you intend to make a few with the same scale length.This is two pieces of ceramic tile edging screwed to a board

stewmac shows mm or inches both in decimals....with meter or millimeter rulers wouldn't I have to round up.? that cant be accurate...? Surely if I rounded up on every number I would be way off by the 20th fret?....now Im confused..lol....how thick is a business card in mm?   cause thats how far I'm off on the 12th fret.

Running measurement from the nut to the fret each time, as Michael says, is the ONLY way to measure. 

The jig is home made, a base board with  two lengths of left over ceramic tile edging 

as I stated...I would have to round off on a mm ruler....Im confused....lol

If you use a fret calculator which prints out a template, such as http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/, you don't need to measure at all. Just print it out, carefully tape it together, and glue it to your fretboard. Cut on the fret lines - voila.

Thanks guys I just downloaded Wfret and it works great. I will use the template to remark my neck.

I really can't recommend printing templates onto paper - I've never done it for marking out fretboards, but I do use a simple printed paper strip for gluing onto the neck when I do my "make and play" workshops. It was brought out to me how inaccurate paper templates are at a recent workshop, when one of the participants had glued on the fretmarker strip onto the neck..and it was a good 1/8 of an inch out at the 12 fret compared with another paper fretmarker. As we make fretless guitars, and I emphasis playing by ear as well as finding the position by eye, it wasn't that much of an issue, but for making a fretted guitar, you want to try and eliminate inaccuracy as far as possible, so a good steel rule is a simple and cheap way of doing that. A lot of ordinary paper is pretty unstable stuff...to a certain extent it changes size with humidity and is relatively elastic...and glueing it on usually introduces moisture or solvents which will cause the paper to loose dimensional stability...whereas at normal temperatures, a steel rule is pretty stable.

I'll have to up my game, thanks for the sage advice CBJ...

here is my first fret job....looks ok but not perfect....also got one tuner out of line but it works..lol...there are no rules right?..lol

This will be a much easier process if you get a metal meter/yard rule.

I know I will get some disagreement, but marking out frets measured from the nut is like measuring flour for cookies by measuring how much is left in the bag.  The fret to bridge part of the string is the part that makes the noise.

go get an affordable meter stick, line up the 63.5 cm mark (25 in)  with the edge of your nut, and then follow the numbers using 12th root of 2 rule

scale 63.50
fret# distance
0 63.50
1 59.94
2 56.57
3 53.40
4 50.40
5 47.57
6 44.90
7 42.38
8 40.00
9 37.76
10 35.64
11 33.64
12 31.75
13 29.97
14 28.29
15 26.70
16 25.20
17 23.79
18 22.45
19 21.19
20 20.00

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