Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Righty Ho, on with the next task in the slow destruction of the 4003 carcass. Having done the truss rods, it was time to turn my attention to the fingerboard. This was partially separated from the neck owing to the oversize broken and generally seized old rods that were in there. Having eased it off with the help of Paul W's heat bar, it was time to get the fingerboard prepped.

First thing to get is a pair of end nippers and grind them down to get them to grip the frets. Apparently you can purchase a tool for this already done, but it's way cheaper to grind a set down if you have a set lying around that you don't mind working on. That's the route I went, total cost, nothing.

Here it is ready to go with the tools.
Then it was time to start pulling frets. First off, I scored the lacquer on the frets with and exacto knife to reduce the possibly that this would lift fingerboard material when the fret is pulled. Then I masked off the fret for essentially the same reason. Then I applied a soldering iron to heat the fret and loosen any glue in there.
With the fret nice and hot, it's time to use the end nippers to slowly grip the fret and pull and rock it up slowly from it's place in the fingerboard.
And there it is, all done. Now it's on to the next thrilling installment, mainly because I only get to post four pictures per post....

Looks like a pro job to me. Good work, Gareth, and thanks for sharing!

And on we go. Having pulled all the frets, it's time to get the lacquer off the fingerboard. This lacquer was particularly chipped and broken, and was about a foot thick. So, starting with 100 grit dry paper, and moving to 320 grit, I removed all of the lacquer. Here it is, as a work in progress.
And now the last job. Getting the binding off. I was worried that this was going to be the job from Hell that getting the binding off the body had been, but this stuff just about leaped off compared to that.
And here it is done. A little more tidying up, but it's essentially all ready for re-assembly.
So, I'm at the end of what I can really do. From now on, it's down to the grownups I think. We'll see though. I'm sure there;s a lot more I can get done given other people's time , knowledge and patience.

Nice work, Gareth. I am curious, though, why you did not sand all the finish off the fingerboard.

jps wrote:Nice work, Gareth. I am curious, though, why you did not sand all the finish off the fingerboard.

I wondered that too. Nice work, indeed.

Great thread, Gareth, and good work!

jps wrote:Nice work, Gareth. I am curious, though, why you did not sand all the finish off the fingerboard.

Seriously, I wanted to take the pictures then go have a beer I'd been at the thing all day.

I'm going to get on with it and finish it off today. I'll just get at it with some 360 grit paper and remove the last little bits there. The lacquer on this fingerboard was a mile deep and very uneven, so it's taken longer to get it off than I expected. I'm trying to be careful to not remove too much material or change the radius of the fretboard too.

Here you go. Now it's really all prepped.

100 grit, followed by 320, followed by 360.

You skipped the 330, 331, 340 and 350.

But you're going to move on to 381 next, right?

jingle_jangle wrote:You skipped the 330, 331, 340 and 350.

But you're going to move on to 381 next, right?

I'm going to keep on going into the 1000's until I've inhaled every last bit of this fingerboard.

Is it me, an optical illusion, or is this fingerboard curved end to end???

johnallg wrote:Is it me, an optical illusion, or is this fingerboard curved end to end???

It does indeed bow up a little at the 7th fret by about 1/8 inch. That's where the most force is exerted by the rods apparently, though I don't know if this caused this bow. It may be because the frets are out. It's flexible enough that it should glue down nicely once back on the bass.

We'll use straight glue. That should do it!

jingle_jangle wrote:We'll use straight glue. That should do it!

I didn't realize the fretboard wood was that flexible.