I learned a great one yesterday, Tony, from my friend and mentor Ward Elliott. He used to work for Geoff Stelling building mandolins, but knew a couple guys in the banjo shop. It so happens I'm in the middle of refretting a Stelling banjo... and their frets are glued-in. So you have to clean the fret slots out with a tiny router bit, then glue the new frets back in. Keeping in mind - this fingerboard is bound, so the fret tang has to be nipped, and filed, each fret has to be individually fitted to the slot where it belongs. This is tedious work that a jeweler would probably enjoy, and be much better at doing! For me, the worst part was Dremel-ing out those fret slots. 😬
I really couldn't understand why they would do such a thing, but every single Stelling I ever worked on was like this. It was just their thing. Anyway, Ward told me what the hack was for this yesterday evening. He said they would wax the fingerboard, carefully keeping the wax out of the fret slots. Fill each slot with slow-set epoxy, and press pre-fit frets into each one. (they should be kinda' loose) Then they turned it face down onto a machined flat surface, like a granite countertop, with a waxed coating, and clamped until the epoxy set. The result was frets so level they didn't need dressing. (most banjos don't have radiused fingerboards... they're flat) All that was left to do was some minor cleanup. That's the kind of inside stuff you can't get from just anywhere.
RE-fretting one is a PITB. But I got it. I made some cork-lined cauls for cradling the neck, and clamped three or four frets at a time.
