I was looking for a way to mark out the frets on a lap steel I'm building and thought this might be of some use to others building any type of fretless guitar.
After marking out and cutting the slots like I would do if using fret wire, I used a hacksaw to widen the slots out to hold a 4" plastic cable tie. The hacksaw blade was the perfect size.I cut the slot deep enough to allow 3/4 of the cable tie to set in the slot. I then drilled out the fret markers and used white glue to install the ties and markers. Simply run a bead of glue over the slot and push the tie down and across with your finger. This will spread the glue evenly in the slot. A damp paper towel was all that was needed to clean the glue off the board.After allowing the glue to dry, I cut off the ends of the cable ties and sanded everything flush going up to 320 grit. A palm sander could be used to knock the plastic ties down even with the board, but I simply used a sanding block. The plastic works down pretty fast. A few coats of Danish oil to seal the board and this is the results.These cable ties come in many different colors and are pretty cheap to buy. As the picture above showed, I cut the large markers out of a medium black pick with a 1/4" paper punch.
I'm very happy with the way it turned out. You could put a thin strip of wood on each side of the board to give it a binding look and cover the ends of the ties, but I'm leaving this one as is. I hope this has been helpful and someone gets some use from it.
Comment
Nice idea, going to do that one of these times.
Interesting ideas. May give this a try.
They wouldn't last long fretting as the string would chew them up pretty fast. Just for looks and reference. You can use nails or wooden skewers in place or "frets" if fretting is too much to handle yet.
Do these work ok if you want to fret and play slide?
I've always inlaid maple into fret slots when making a fretted bass fretless, but thought this was a bit too much work for a simple CBG, so this idea is great if I do a fretless CGB. One could use a different coloured fret marker instead of a position marker dot.
I've always referred to them a fret markers and the dots as position markers.
Cheers Taff
OK, looks great. much nicer look that the pen I used on mine. ;) Will have to give it a shot on my next fretless one.
It works like a fretless, the lines are there for reference.
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