Post 26: Finishing up the Lap Steel

    Since my fingertips are numb and my right hand is beginning to lose its dexterity too, I better finish up all the instruments before it gets worse. The  small screws give me a hard time

   The lap steel was functional, but still lacking frets, in need of improvements to the bridge and the nut, as well as some cosmetic work. I took the cheap round wound strings off, as they will be replaced by better smooth flat wound strings that will be much less noisy with the slide. I marked the fret positions as accurately as I could, doing my measurements four separate times and using the average of the four.

   I had never set frets before, but it was easy enough once I got the right saw. I already had a razor-thin saw and an old blunt wider one. I ordered a fretting saw and made a (much too) big miter box. To keep the fretboard straight in the miter box, I taped at each end of the ebony fretboard a dowel cut to the width of the box. I used the thin saw to score a shallow mark at each fret and checked my measurements a second dime. The fretboard is about 3/16" thick and the small brass frets about 3/32", so I marked a line on the saw blade at about 1/8" and cut the 24 fret slots. Ebony is very hard, and the slots cut with the "fret saw" turned out to be too narrow. Luckily, my old worn-out saw was perfect to score them to the proper width. I  cut each fret to size, set them with a few blows from a plastic mallet, and filed the ends smooth one by one, polishing ebony and brass as I went with fine steel wool. 

   I finally drilled shallow 1/4" holes to inset abalone markers.

   The fretboard turned out well and looks really good. These very small mandolin frets are only going to be used as guides for the position of the steel slide.

   Next, I refined the rough cut ebony bridge, adding a few curves and polishing it. Finally, I drilled 3 big holes and filled two with aluminum rods. I drilled four smaller holes and inset four brass rods:

  I put the whole thing back together after rubbing the aluminum body with a soft 3M pad.