Paul H. Jacobson, Luthier

I developed my epoxy-casting fretting technology almost twenty years ago after I built my first guitar for Bill Kanengiser.  Bill wanted larger frets than the ones I had installed in his guitar, so I needed to refret it.  Somehow—I have no clear recollection just how I managed to do this—I made the fret slots too large for a conventional fret installation, so I was in a deep fix.  I got myself out of the fix by installing the new frets in epoxy, and it worked out so well that I have not done a conventional fret installation since.

Conventional methods of installing frets involve forcing the fret tang into a slot that is ideally slightly larger than the tang but smaller than the barbs on the tang, which are supposed to snag on the walls of the slot to hold the fret in place, typically with the help of glue.  The forcing is done with a hammer or some kind of fret pressing device.  Both of these methods have serious drawbacks.

Of the two conventional methods, hammering is the worst.  It is virtually impossible to hammer in frets without causing some fret distortion unless the slots are so large that their ability to hold onto the fret tangs is tenuous.  A fret press minimizes fret distortion but relies on custom inserts shaped to the radius of the fingerboard.  That's fine only if your fingerboard's radius is an exact match to an available insert.  What's more, fret pressing equipment is expensive.  A set of two presses needed for open neck fretting and frets over the soundboard plus a complete set of inserts is more than $300.  The special-purpose tools needed for my epoxy casting technique can be had for less than $10

My epoxy technique gets the frets into the slots with virtually no stress and fretwire distortion, so the crowns end up very even and the entire fret, including the wayward fretends, is securely held in place.  I know of no instance of a loose fret or a fret that became uneven since I began using this technique.  Because the height of the crowns is very even right after the frets are installed, they can be dressed (leveled, re-crowned and polished) with a bare minimum of crown removal, leaving them at maximum height.