I purchased 4 x 2 ft lengths of medium gauge fret wire from stewmac.com they had very good service to Australia. The folks at Maton Guitars were kind enough to bend it for me. I wasn't too keen to undertake that job myself.
I have also bought a piece of 10mm 5083 aluminium plate for the fretboard itself. Am a bit concerned about internal stresses at the moment, the plate has a fair bend in it to begin with which I might press out before machining. And after machining who knows what will occur. Some more thought I think.
Am also planning on making a small sample piece to test the size of groove that the fret wire will press in to. I have bought a couple of 0.508mm (0.02") end mills which I was planning on doing the job with, the fret wire tang measures .75mm in width so I might need to take a couple of passes. It occurs to me the barbs on the fret wire tang was not designed to be pressed into aluminium, so some experimentation is required, I bought plenty of wire for this reason.
I also must finalize the CAD and CAM. More about that later, along with some info on the VMC I'll be using to do the machining. Also I am still to work out how I will fixture this part to machine it.
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