Inlays - scraping the epoxy

My scraping tool showed up in the mail amongst other parts and supplies. My brother also came over to pick up his new guitar and start setting it up. So we both commenced our separate projects.

Neck and scraping tool:

The epoxy had really cured well after 6 days (read: solid like a rock). Scraping was a chore. Next time I will do it after the requisite 8-12 hours drying time instead. The epoxy was still tacky and rubbery at that point and would have been much easier to scrape off. The aftermath:

Came out pretty good except there were a few spots where some bubbles had formed so the surface was not smooth around the inlay edges. The first position inlay was also slightly crooked. It was hard to see the exact inlay orientation at the time since the epoxy had seeped over the edges. Argh.

Meanwhile, there was some buzzing on the D string of my brother's Epi Dot. Seemed like the slot in the nut was too low. Since he was going to re-string it anyway, I figured we could check the frets while the strings were off too. Turned that while the neck was super straight, the frets were uneven in multiple spots so a fret level and dress was in order. We strapped the guitar down, he marked the tops of the frets with a Sharpie, and then he started filing:

After several passes with the fret leveling file:

Once that was done, he moved on to crowning the frets. Didn't get any pics because I was too busy scraping away at the epoxy. Once he finished crowning the frets, he switched to a fret dressing stick:

 I had 4 different grits of sand paper for the dressing stick but he only used 3 of them. In retrospect, he thought using the 4th grit would have produced an even smoother result. It was getting late and he was running out of steam. Last step was to go over the frets with 0000 steel wool:

After cleanup and a polish, it was time to re-string. Note the pickguard and clamp in the foreground - the metal Epiphone 'E' logo was peeling off so he glued the loose portion and clamped it while it dried.

After tuning it up we were still getting some buzzing. We built up the nut slot a little with some super glue and bits of toothpick and adjusted the truss rod and bridge height. Much better. Didn't have time to adjust the intonation before he had to leave but added that to the list of other small projects/mods he wanted to do in the near future.

Meantime, I was plugging the old tuner screw holes on the back of the headstock of the Ventura. These will mostly be covered by the new tuners but I thought it'd be good touch-up practice for me on an inconscipuous area.

I also decided to do the same for the truss rod cover screw holes. I'm going to keep the original plate but replace the screws with newer, better quality ones. Of course the threads won't match so...

Next, I think I'll try to fix that crooked first position inlay and maybe back-fill the non-smooth edges with more epoxy...