A gorgeous '70s Gibson Heritage. Sounding amazing, but heavy wear on the frets has made fretting chords on the first three frets almost impossible.

There was lots of wear across all the frets, so a complete refret was required. The first job was to remove all the frets.

This is done by heating each fret up with a 100W soldering iron. This heat breaks the glue holding the frets in. The soldering iron is followed by a pair of fret pullers, which are really a small pair of flush cutters. The act of squeezing the fret with them will pull the fret out. Much care must be taken not to pull out and crack the fingerboard, so the fret should be well heated.

Once the old frets have been pulled, new frets must be cut. It comes in long wires, which must be bent to a smaller radius than the fret board. This overbend ensures that the ends of the frets stay down once they are in place.

From this wire, the frets are cut to length. In order to ensure they don't get mixed up, and you use the correct length to hammer into each slot, I recommend the fashioning of a fret-a-tron.

Each hole is numbered with the number of the fret, so you don't get them mixed up. Because this guitar has binding running down each side of the fretboard, the tang (the part of the fret that fits in the slot of the fretboard) must be trimmed so it doesn't go to the end of each fret.

Now the fret is the correct size and shape, they can be hammered into the slots, after the fretboard has been sanded level.

Very thin superglue is dabbed onto the frets, so it wicks under the fret and along the slot. Then the fret is clamped. This is done by using a thin piece of wood, with a fret each side laterally. The clamp in the middle means these two frets push the frets in the fretboard down and out. This helps the ends stay in.

Once clamped and dried, the ends are trimmed using the flush cutters.

Then a file is used to shape the ends of the frets so they are at 45 degrees to the fingerboard.

Now the frets are in, they must be levelled, crowned and polished. First, the frets are made level with each other, using a piece of glass with sandpaper glued to it, ensuring the sanding surface is as flat as possible.

As you can see, the levelling process leaves the frets flat at the top. From a side view, they are trapezia. Frets should appear semi-circular from the side, so must be crowned. This is done with a crowning file, which is a file with a concave edge, which carves the top of the fret round. To ensure the height of the fret isn't changed, a line is drawn across the top of the fret with a felt marker. The fret is crowned until this line is so thin it is almost disappearing. This means that the fret has been rounded, but the very top has not been touched.

The final process is the polish. The fret is now covered in scratches from the levelling and crowning processes, so each fret must have every scratch polished out. Also, the ends must be rounded off and polished, so that there are no sharp corners to catch your hand when playing.

Once one, the fingerboard is cleaned, to remove all the tiny pieces of fret. I use lemon oil for this process. Not only does it do an excellent job of cleaning and protecting your fingerboard, it also gives your guitar a pleasant smell.

This is the end result.