"I could whittle with a utility knife, but that would be wasteful and time consuming."
"I find that a surgical saw, something like what one can find even on Amazon (Satterlee Bone Saw 13") is an ideal tool. A very thin blade with sharp teeth. Just make sure you do not cut yourself in the process... It is actually ideal for many uses with wood, bone and plastics." Guys, Why would either of you go to all that bother, rather than merely replacing the fret? Of course, an emergency situation (5 minutes before show time, during rehearsal, or stuck out somewhere beyond easy reach of the postal service & no spare gut) is another story. I could remove & replace 10 gut frets in the time it would take you to whittle a single proper shim out of a "1/2 inch by 1/2 inch by 10 inches ( 1cm x 1cm x 20cm)" piece of anything. That is, single frets. The more traditional doubles (still routinely used by the viol players) would take a little more time. Fret changing is not hard at all, once you've done a few and get into the rhythm of it. Soon you will be getting them so tight that you will have to back off to keep from breaking the thinner ones, and even that big, bad 1st fret will only take the slightest more aggression to make as tight as necessary. Thomas Mace has a pretty good tutorial on frets, as I remember. So does Dan Larson on his website, and no doubt there are others easily available. Catch me at the right time I'll do it for you, and show you how. A cigarette lighter, fingernail clippers, and maybe (strictly optional) a small pliers for the 1st fret. The business with the surgical saw is what I paid a professional luthier to do recently when I had bone body frets put on my lute- frets 10 & up. He messed up my 9th & 8th frets leveling the new bone frets, and it took me 3 minutes or less to replace them practically under his nose in the shop. Happy fretting! (It almost gets fun) Dan
I could whittle with a utility knife, butthat would be wasteful and time consuming.
alexander r. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
