How to Restore a Fretboard

Oil and dirt from your hands will accumulate on your guitar's fretboard.

Restore the fretboard of your guitar if the fret markers are uneven or your fingerboard has accumulated a lot of finger dirt. A guitar or bass guitar’s fretboard is the front portion of the neck, houses the metallic fret markers and has a specific wood, usually ebony or rosewood, chosen for acoustic properties. Restoring a fretboard can require simple cleaning or polishing of the fretboard itself or even leveling of the fret markers. Learning to do these two tasks can give you the skills to restore most fretboards.

Things You'll Need

• Motor oil or clarinet bore oil
• 400 grit sandpaper
• 500 or 600 grit sandpaper
• 0000 steel wool
• Old T-shirt or soft cloth
• Metal file
• Masking tape
• Triangular needle-file

Instructions

Cleaning and Polishing

1. Remove the strings from the guitar to allow access to the fretboard. Do this by loosening the strings at the machine heads and then removing them by hand. You only have to move them away from the neck, so you don’t have to remove them at the bridge end. Put a few spots of oil onto a piece of 400 grit sandpaper. Sand lightly up and down the length of the fingerboard to remove any small dinks or nicks in the wood’s surface.

2. Change to a piece of 500 or 600 grit sandpaper and apply a few spots of oil again. Gently sand up and down the fretboard in the same way (from the nut to the body of the guitar) to give the wood a more smooth finish. Use 0000 grade steel wool, again with a small amount of oil, to polish the wood and the fret markers themselves.

3. Clean the fretboard with a soft cloth or old T-shirt. Remove any residual oil or any built up grime around the frets. Ensure that the fretboard is clean before restringing the instrument. If there are any more significant dinks in the fret markers, you may need to file them down.

Leveling Fret Markers

1. Remove the strings if this hasn’t already been done. Take the nut out of the neck. This can interfere with the leveling of the frets because it is much higher. Remove the nut through force. It can easily be reinserted when you have finished with the frets. Identify the fret which has a specific issue, if any. A dink that comes very close to the guitar’s fretboard may require a new fret marker instead of filing. General inequalities through wear and tear should be filed.

2. File all of the fret markers level using a flat, metal file. Lay the file flat across the tops of the fret markers and remember to account for the slight curve in the neck and the fret markers. Follow the radius to file the fret markers evenly. File them carefully, no more than necessary to even out the tops. Wipe the tiny shards of metal off the fretboard.

3. Cover the frets with masking tape so the fret markers stick out. Cover the wood of the fretboard up as well as possible. This is to ensure nothing damages the fretboard when you shape the markers. Use a triangular needle-file to round down the corners of the fret markers. This is important to prevent things like string buzz.

4. Use 0000 grade steel wool to polish the fret markers down after they have been leveled. Gently rub them with steel wool to polish the surface of the markers. Remove the masking tape when you are done to reveal the leveled fretboard.

References

• Guitar Site; Home Freboard Care; Chip Wilson
• Black Guitars: Fret Leveling/ Fret Dressing
• Finger Lakes Guitar Repair: Fretboard Wear