Yes, it's me...again! Well, I got the thing put together and strung and I have a nice low action at the nut, but my neck is bowed a little and the action is too high as you move toward the box. I doubt there is much I can do about this on my fretted 3 string CBG, but I thought I would ask. The neck was slightly bowed before being strung and I thought it might work anyway. If there is anything I can do, please let me know, if not...on to the next build. Thanks again for being such a patient and helpful group.
You need to be a member of Cigar Box Nation to add comments!
Replies
Thanks for the info, fellows!
Great tips in that vid Dan!
This may help a bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ3F7-aXMiw
Unlucky Tom, this happened to me a few times when I started making these. Any chance you could post a few pictures to this topic? We might be able to recommend some steps to avoid it in future.
Take a good stainless steel straight edge and lay it from the first fret to at least the 12th and see how severe the bow actually is. If it is not too severe, you could try leveling the frets with a good, long sanding block. take a sharpie and color the top of all the frets so you can see when all frets show signs of contact with the sanding block. You can then smooth and polish the top of the frets with something like 1000 grit.
It all depends on how badly things are bowed. you can't sand the frets away, but you can level them then try lowering the bridge to reduce action height up around the 12th.
You should be able to get things sorted out enough to make the instrument a decent player. Just don't get over aggressive with the sanding block.