Fret Leveling

My pickup-expectation paralysis broke finally, today, and I decided to make myself useful.

I used a cheap 24" foot aluminum level for this job.  It has a nice straight edge, and it's just a bit longer than the fretboard.  I got some fabric carpet tape, which is advertised as being easily removable.  I already had some 320 grit sandpaper.

I put the carpet tape on the level 1" strips of the sandpaper onto the carpet tape.  I adjusted the neck as flat as possible.  I began to take run the level across the frets, making every (poor, I'm sure) attempt at preserving the conical fretboard radius.  I got it to where nearly every fret had a flattened top except for the bass side of the second, and a couple up around 17/18.  Those weren't getting touched.  To go faster, I used the same course file I used for fret end trimming.

Finally, they were all flattened to some degree.  Then I marked them with black marker and used my fret crowning file to make the fret tops round again.  I'm glad I bought that one file.  I couldn't have done the crowning without it.

Next is to dress the fret ends and polish the frets.

Here are a couple of sites that do a far better job of describing this than I can:

http://www.skguitar.com/SKGS/sk/fretcrowning.htm
http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/repair/acoustic-guitar/fret-leveling.php
http://www.stevesguitarsite.com/FRETLEVEL&CROWN.HTML