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a question about cleaning fretboards


sammyreynolds01

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I was talking to a violinist the other day who also happens to be a guitarist. I asked him what did he use to clean his fretboard. He said that he used the same thing to clean his violin fingerboard. He said he used water to clean the boards and on occasion that his boards got really grimy he would use rubbing alcohol cut with a little bit of water. I have heard of people using water to clean their boards, but wouldn't alcohol dry them out?

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Mine never really get dirty but I use a little dunlop lemon oil on them once a year to prevent them from becoming dry . Never had a problem. I would think alcohol would dry them out and would moisturize thereafter if I did require to use it.

 

Are people playing guitar with mud on their hands or something? Mine never get dirty.

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LOL. To be honest my boards don't get dirty much either. Some people sweat a lot and it can't get on the board. Like you I may have to rub my fretboard with oil ones a year to condition it.. I was always taught that oil was a conditioner and you should use lemon oil to condition your board after you clean it with water. I guess if you used alcohol and then condition it with oil, that would be ok?

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LOL. To be honest my boards don't get dirty much either. Some people sweat a lot and it can't get on the board. Like you I may have to rub my fretboard with oil ones a year to condition it.. I was always taught that oil was a conditioner and you should use lemon oil to condition your board after you clean it with water. I guess if you used alcohol and then condition it with oil' date=' that would be ok?[/quote']

From everything I've read and regarding personal experience, that's the go.

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Each time I change strings I just wipe the entire guitar with a damp rag. If I get a guitar in my shop with a really grungy fretboard I will clean it with 0000 steel wool if it is an unfinished board (ebony, rosewood). That also cleans the frets. If its a finished maple board just water. Naptha (lighter fluid) is an acceptable solvent for most guitar finishes and will get really bad crud off the guitar.

 

Lemon oil is a bit controversial. Martin specifically says in their FAQ not to use it on guitars finished with nitrocellulose lacquer - they say it can damage the lacquer. Taylor, on the other hand, suggests a tiny drop carefully wiped onto the entire board - but of course Taylor's modern finishes are impervious to about anything. Personally, I don't use it - I think its like putting Armorall on your care tires - it makes them nice and shiny but doesn't do any good. You will find many in the lutherie trade who say that your fretboard does not need "feeding" and certainly getting any oil products on the guitar itself can make future finishing repairs difficult.

 

Also, if your violin buddy has what is called a French polish finish on his instrument, that is shellac dissolved in alcohol. He is cleaning with the very solvent that was used to put the finish on in the first place - in my opinion not a good idea. There are other finished used on violins but I prefer to keep any solvent away from an instrument unless you know its totally safe.

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I believe we are talking about cleaning the fretboard, not the guitar.

 

I am merely repeating what the Martin FAQ says

 

~~Can I use lemon oil on my fingerboard?

We do not recommend using lemon oil on our fingerboards. The acids in lemon oil break down the finish of our guitars. It may also aid the corrosion of the frets and lessen the life of the strings

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I am merely repeating what the Martin FAQ says

 

~~Can I use lemon oil on my fingerboard?

We do not recommend using lemon oil on our fingerboards. The acids in lemon oil break down the finish of our guitars. It may also aid the corrosion of the frets and lessen the life of the strings

Why didn't you type the above in your original post? You're changing the context, and it's finally appropriate. Thank you.

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Me too. Works good on the rosewood boards. On maple sealed fretboards, just about anything that's not harsh.

 

 

yeah I never use it on my maple finished boards. I have two and both are old school nitro so I don't take any chances. On those I just use 100% cotton cloth (ripped up old t-shirt...lol) and a bit of elbow grease. If it's real bad then I'll use the guitar finish cream which is made safe for nitro....at least that's what gibson say. That's the thing with a maple board though....it's pretty easy to clean.

 

On the rosewood and ebony boards I have with guitars with a nitro finish, I'm very careful to not get any on the finish....if I do...on the upper frets, then I get it off quick with a cotton cloth.

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I wrote a short article on oiling fretboards some time ago... sort of related. For cleaning, damp cloth is best as long as it isn't too gunked up.

 

...click on the Oiling Your Fretboard... the URL just takes you to the main page.

 

 

sounds very reasonable. I think wood isn't as sensitive as the impression you get on guitar forums. Like one wrong move and it's going to shatter like thin glass. Of course this is coming from someone with zero wood working skills...so there you go....lol..

 

I guess in some ways I'm a little lucky cause the humidity where I live is rarely below 50% and usually around 60 - 70%. But then I pay for it with strings and my sweaty hands...they get destroyed real quick.

 

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Of course fretboards get dirty. And "not needing feeding" is debatable; if you live in a very dry climate, or a place where the humidity has great swings (I do), many open-grained woods will respond to, or need, "feeding." This is why we have humidifiers.

 

And Freeman, I love you, but naphtha is pretty controversial to me. It's a hydrocarbon (bad); in some forms it is considered carcinogenic; and it is very difficult to dispose of in an environmentally sound manner.

 

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Of course fretboards get dirty. And "not needing feeding" is debatable; if you live in a very dry climate, or a place where the humidity has great swings (I do), many open-grained woods will respond to, or need, "feeding." This is why we have humidifiers.

 

And Freeman, I love you, but naphtha is pretty controversial to me. It's a hydrocarbon (bad); in some forms it is considered carcinogenic; and it is very difficult to dispose of in an environmentally sound manner.

 

I don't want to get in a great big pissin' match over this - frankly I don't care what people put on their guitars (unless they bring them to me for a fret job or refin, then I want to know). When asked what I use I'm happy to tell people what (and why). I keep my fretboards clean, they don't get so dirty that I need anything other than a damp cloth. I am also pretty anal about humidity control - my guitars stay in their cases and each one has a little cheapie humidifier and I store my wood in my wine cellar where the temperature and humidity are constant.

 

Putting any kind of oil on a piece of wood is not replacing anything that was there naturally - it is done to make is shinny and pretty. Nothing wrong with that. Maintaining proper humidity will keep the wood from drying out and cracking. I have never seen anything by an authority on wood preservation that says wood needs an annual dose of lemon oil, but again, if someone wants to use it or any other product that is their business.

 

I also hate every solvent that I have to use in my shop. Naphtha is accepted as something that will clean really dirty guitars and not harm them, but I prefer to clean a fretboard with steel wool. Use naphtha in very small quantities and in good ventilation. In my shop I also use denatured alcohol, acetone, solvent based lacquer and various glues - I try to wear a respirator or at least have my ventilation system running. I've almost completely stopped using nitrocellulose lacquer unless a customer requests (and then I shoot in a full spray booth) but I still have to touch up lacquer when doing repairs. I'm about as environmentally conscious as anyone, but unfortunately we still need hydrocarbons.

 

edit to add a question - for everyone here who owns an acoustic or a hollow body - do you feel a need to reach inside and smear a little lemon oil on the wood? Your guitar isn't finished inside - it must be loosing something and you probably need to "feed" it, eh?

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I see no reason to buy small expensive bottles of stuff. I start with a soft rag' date=' water, and finish with a little mineral oil. Small amounts of both have worked well for me for many years.[/quote']

 

 

I don't know.....for me it's not worth it your way. A bottle of mineral oil is what....5 bucks? A bottle of gibson fretboard conditioner is at most 10. A bottle of mineral oil will probably be in a size way bigger than I'll ever need and just take up more space cause I never use it for anything else. I'll pay a bit extra for the convenience of a small package and the nice lemon scent. I've had the same bottle for over 5 years now and use it on 5 or 6 different guitars and I still have more than half a bottle left. It's not like they are charging 20 bucks for the stuff.

 

 

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I don't know.....for me it's not worth it your way. A bottle of mineral oil is what....5 bucks? A bottle of gibson fretboard conditioner is at most 10. A bottle of mineral oil will probably be in a size way bigger than I'll ever need and just take up more space cause I never use it for anything else. . . .

Ordinary baby oil is just mineral oil with some fragrance. Your guitar might smell like a baby's bottom for a while but that's the only drawback. You could probably find a use for it if you tried.

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I haven't tried all these cleaning techniques, but I have tried a few and right now my favorite is Gorgomyte. It's safe to use on the fretboard and frets and I'm amazed by the amount of grime it cleans off the finger board. To be honest, its kind of scary to look at the cloth after a cleaning.

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I don't think raising awareness is a "pissing match." Perhaps you are uncomfortable with it, but I'm not. Naptha doesn't break down easily, and is one more ugly chemical we don't really need in this world.

 

0000 steel wool works; so do damp rags + elbow grease.

 

I've only seen fretboards ruined by excessive use of oils or a whole bunch of water. Dirt gets there by becoming trapped in oils (or just layered on); moisture lifts, and then while suspended, you wipe clean. You don't need naptha - or any other harsh chemical - to do that.

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Dan, I am working on a headstock repair on a little Epi LP right now (I know this has nothing to do with cleaning fretboards) There was some sort of sticker on the back of the headstock that left some sticky residue. Water wouldn't remove it and I needed to apply some epoxy to the broken part. I was pretty sure the finish was poly (there is a good test but it also uses solvents). I keep a small can of lighter fluid and put a small drop on a rag, cleaned the stick crap off and proceeded with the repair. On the same job I had to put some paraffin (canning wax) on the headstock to keep the epoxy from sticking to it - again, when I was done a tiny drop of the lighter fluid removed that. I know that I should have disposed of the rags in a chemical hazard manner, but the did go to the landfill (my bad). Sometimes you do what you gotta do.

 

Going back to the question about "feeding' wood - I have a rather large inventory of wood that I buy and keep for future builds - there are 6 Lutz top sets, a beautiful flamed Spanish cedar drop top, some mahogany and koa, and several ebony fretboards. I may not get around to using these for several years - does the forum think I should go down to my wood storage area (it's climate controlled) and smear some lemon oil on these so they don't dry out? Do you think that's what Gibson does with their stock of ebony?

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Dan, I am working on a headstock repair on a little Epi LP right now (I know this has nothing to do with cleaning fretboards) There was some sort of sticker on the back of the headstock that left some sticky residue. Water wouldn't remove it and I needed to apply some epoxy to the broken part. I was pretty sure the finish was poly (there is a good test but it also uses solvents). I keep a small can of lighter fluid and put a small drop on a rag, cleaned the stick crap off and proceeded with the repair. On the same job I had to put some paraffin (canning wax) on the headstock to keep the epoxy from sticking to it - again, when I was done a tiny drop of the lighter fluid removed that. I know that I should have disposed of the rags in a chemical hazard manner, but the did go to the landfill (my bad). Sometimes you do what you gotta do.

 

Going back to the question about "feeding' wood - I have a rather large inventory of wood that I buy and keep for future builds - there are 6 Lutz top sets, a beautiful flamed Spanish cedar drop top, some mahogany and koa, and several ebony fretboards. I may not get around to using these for several years - does the forum think I should go down to my wood storage area (it's climate controlled) and smear some lemon oil on these so they don't dry out? Do you think that's what Gibson does with their stock of ebony?

 

Sure, use lemon oil. If you've got no bacon fat!

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