The next step in this project was to prepare the fretboard by routing out some damage done by the previous botched repair job by fitting and glueing in a maple filler strip. Once this was done I lightly sanded the bottom of the fretboard and then radius sanded the top nice and flat. A few of the fingernail gouges, at the first three positions, were too deep and I left these alone.
Next, the fretboard slots were cleaned out, and the slot tops lightly chamfered. Then, a full fret job was performed on the Indian rosewood board, using medium-wide, medium-high wire (a personal preference on my part). This was the first fret job I have done on a fretboard which had been removed and lying flat on a work table. Using a 9.5" radiused brass fretting caul, mounted to my drill press chuck, I was able to press-in all of the frets in less than 15 minutes. This modern process was such a joy to work to the end; I sort of wanted another fretboard handy to just keep going
.
With the frets installed, the fret ends were nipped, filed and beveled. Now that the fretboard was fretted and prepared, I was ready to reglue the fretboard to the now perfectly flat neck.