StewMac Fingerboard Guards protect your fretboard when filing or polishing frets
V-3744
Clean professional fret work! StewMac's improved design fits all fretwire sizes, anywhere on the neck—even the high frets. Sets for guitar or bass. Guitar set fits most mandolins and ukulele spaces, too. Made of flexible 0.010" stainless steel for durability and long life.
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Aaron Smiley - StewMac Tech Advisor]
StewMac Fingerboard Guards
Aaron Smiley: The Fingerboard Guards are a great time-saver and protect your fretboard while you're working on your frets. On this guitar, I'm working on the frets, specifically crowning and polishing. Whenever you're doing that work, you want to protect the fingerboard, specifically because you're using files and abrasives. And a lot of that work is perpendicular to the grain lines of the guitar, and that will leave scratches that don't blend in with the grain lines and doesn't look very good. Low-Tack Tape can work great for this sort of job, but sometimes can be a little too time-consuming and you end up using a lot of tape, especially if all you're doing is taking the grime off of a fret with some steel wool.
The fingerboard guard is designed to protect the fretboard around a single fret while you work on it. It's made of stainless steel and about 10 thousandths thick, so you still get access to all the fret crown when you're working on it. And it's pretty flexible, so you can bend it to any fretboard radius that you have. The fingerboard guard comes with a rubber band. You can loop around the neck and fasten in these notches to hold the guard in place, so you still have two hands to work on the frets. And it's also great for when you're working up the neck and switching to different frets.
The fingerboard guards come in two different sets, guitar and basa. The guitar set has narrow, medium, and wide slots for different size fret wire. And the base has narrow and wide, and the base set will work on five and six strings too. The fingerboard guards have a slim profile, so they'll fit in between the higher frets on a guitar. And it'll work for most ukulele and mandolin spacing as well.
