About the Fly fingerboard

[Ken Parker]

How thick is the carbon composite of the fretboard?

The fingerboard is .05 mm thick sandwich of glass and carbon fibers that is laminated in a heated press with a high temperature curing epoxy resin that bonds the two layers together.

Next, the frets are glued on and trimmed to length before the fingerboard is attached to the neck.

The top surface, or playing surface is a .25 mm layer of woven glass cloth, and below that is a .25 mm layer of non - woven unidirectional carbon fibers.

To bond the fretted fingerboard to the wooden neck core, another .25 mm layer of fiberglass, impregnated with a lower temperature curing epoxy is used.

The finished fingerboard then measures .75 mm when installed.

I hope I’ve explained this clearly.

[Tesph]

What was the reason behind :

1. Associating both Carbon and Glass fiber for the fingerboard ?

2. Facing fiber glass on fingerboard's top ?

Very curious...

[Ken Parker]

The boards measured .020" or .5mm thick, the top half of the layup - .010 layer was woven fiberglass, the usual " 0 - 90 degree fiber orientation, and the bottom .010" layer was non-woven 0 degree AKA "uni" or unidirectional, that is, non-woven carbon fiber. These materials were "pre-preg", that is pre-impregnated with epoxy resin, and carefully specified with the appropriate resin content, or fiber-to-resin ratio. The resin in the pre-preg needed to cure for 2 hours at 250F, and was made in a big press with heated platens, with release paper between the plies of fingerboard material.

[Ken Parker]

I forgot to mention that the fretted .020" fingerboard was bonded to the basswood and later, mahogany necks with an additional layer of .010" thick prepreg fiberglass cloth. Essentially, this created a fingerboard that was 2/3 fiberglass/epoxy and 1/2 carbon fiber/epoxy measuring .030" or .75mm thick. The fingerboard gluing surface was conical, and the fingerboard was cylindrical, but high pressure and a very precise, stiff steel caul brought them together to form the correct conical surface. Confused? I hope not, it was a beautiful system that worked to perfection, and completely removed the necessity of adjusting the fret heights after assembly. Result? we did absolutely zero fretwork, and every guitar was shipped with frets exactly as supplied by our wire rolling vendor company.