Fixing a Guitar Fretboard: Files

Video Transcript

"One of the most important kinds of tools whenever you're working with metal, are various kinds of files. Rasps and sanders, things that abrade the metal and take it down and reshape it. Files are the most handy for fretwork. This is in poor shape, these are old files. I've had them a very long time. But for most of the fretwork we're going to need, we're going to need a flat file. A file that's flat on one or both sides, I prefer having it rounded a little bit on the top. But basically this is for leveling our frets when we're getting into that stage. And so the flatness of the file allows us to work multiple frets at the same time. So a good flat file, I keep them in different sizes because the finer we go, ultimately we want to get this metal shiny. And so when we get this metal shiny, we're going to have to remove all of the fret file marks on the frets. So as we go from the rough tools, rough cutting shaping tools, we use finer and finer files. This will take away the file marks from this and then we can go to finer ones to remove them even further. And then go to sandpaper and then finally, we'll go to a metal cleaner or an abrasive like a pumice to get it completely smooth. So we've got files of different sizes. This group here, these are needle files. They will not only be handy for removing the rougher file marks. But they will also be useful when we get to the point where we're actually shaping the ends of the files, the frets so that we don't end up cutting your hands on them."