Mike O's Fan Fretter Nearing Completion

Mike's fan-fretted semi-baritone is very near completion now. On Saturday I installed the frets. In order to accommodate the binding on the fingerboard, the tang of each fret is cut short and the underside of the crown is filed smooth so that it can overhang the binding. The fret ends are then uniformly bevelled and shaped with files and then smoothed with fine abrasives. On Sunday I made a custom bridge, which is skewed in accordance with the fan fret design. To begin laying out the bridge I taped a piece of graph paper to the top of the guitar and then, carefully measuring from the frets, drew a line for the compensated saddle, and also the slightly less angled line for a hypothetical uncompensated saddle, which I then used as the angle of the forward edge of the bridge. Then I was able to lay out the pin-hole locations on paper, mapping out what pin-hole spacing would produce the desired perpendicular string-spacing. I like the way the grain orientation gives the finished bridge a bit of a swoopy look. It's getting real close to another guitar birthday! :)