Can You Use Baby Oil to Oil a Fretboard?

It’s always good to keep your guitar looking fresh and clean. In some cases, without appropriate upkeep, repairs are inescapable. When it comes to the right management and upkeep of your guitar, it is crucial that you oil your guitar fretboard. Can you use baby oil to oil a fretboard? Stay tuned and let’s dive into the topic!

So, keeping your guitar in a solid state means fretboard care should be at the top of your priorities. While you can replace most parts on your guitar without much bother, replacing a fretboard can be pricey work. In most cases, you will need to replace the whole neck, which could revise the way your guitar feels in your hand.

So, can you use baby oil to oil a fretboard? Notably, a small bit of a tip is okay for string durability on electric guitars. Put baby oil on some slim textile and swipe it all across the strings. Don’t worry about rust, it won’t occur!

Regular Guitar Supervision

What is the most alarming part of the guitar upkeep? Everyone will usually tell you it’s how horrible some guitar fretboards evolve to be.

As you play, your hands sweat a lot, and you shed dead skin. This dead skin and sweat will certainly be going to end up somewhere after all. You may be truly shocked and disgusted after you know this. 

A bunch of it ends up getting crusted to the strings and fretboard. Inspect a guitar that doesn’t get cleaned often. You will see the leftovers that your sweat and skin vacate. Kind of horrendous, right?

The way to prevent this buildup, or at the very least greatly lower it, is to wipe down your fretboard with a slick microfiber fabric after every session. As a prize, by wiping down your fretboard, you will also expand the life of your strings.

Why Is It Important to Oil Your Fretboard?

As natural wood ages with time so it minds to dry out. If the wood on your fretboard dries out considerably, your fretboard will shatter, wear out, and in extreme cases, your frets may not pose as good in the neck.

By employing a natural oil like Dunlop’s Lemon Oil Fingerboard Remedy, you can replace the moistness that your fretboard is naturally leaving.

You must use an outcome created especially for a guitar. Furniture polish, for example, will do a cut-rate job of moisturizing your guitar. What is more, some oils may have a damaging reaction with the metal on your strings, and reduce their lifespan.

How Often Should You Oil Your Fretboard?

An oversoaked fretboard could, in extreme cases, be as damaging to your guitar as a dry one. It is consequently essential to recall that you should rehearse control when oiling your fretboard.

Most retail guitar factories recommend that you oil your fretboard once every six months. There are people out there who mind oiling their fretboard every time they swap their strings.

Not only is this a waste of oil, but it can also guide to damaging your guitar for real. If you slip into this classification, think about giving your guitar a couple of months before oiling it again.

Tip: Now, can you see if your guitar is plywood? Perhaps yes, by finding a smudged part. If you can see the piles of wood, that is certainly a layer.

How to Oil Your Fretboard?

Less is more when it comes to oiling. This is a fact, by all means! You want to utilize enough oil to cover the fretboard, but not so much oil that there are dots where it pools up.

Some brands nowadays have freeloader applicators that can help you from over-oiling. If your oil does not include some applicator, you can get the corner of a rag and use that instead.

Use enough oil so that you can protect the fretboard, by all means. After that, by employing a dry rag (or the dry corner of your oil rag), pat the oil into the wood. 

After it’s accomplished, wait a few seconds and tap the fretboard with the length of your finger. Doing so will bring any spare moisture to the shell of the guitar, which you can then brush off using a rag.

Tip: Why is there a theory that some guitarists are arrogant? Is this only a false impression or is there something more to this?

How to Clean a Fretboard?

So, let’s see how we can clean the entire guitar fretboard. Keep reading this guide for more facts below!

Where Do You Keep Your Guitar?

So, before starting to scour your precious guitar, keep some things in your mind. It is particularly crucial that you store it in a secure way. We certainly don’t want any harm to happen. 

Firstly, never try to cleanse the guitar on the underpart. Try to keep this in mind at all times! This will usually irritate your guitar’s core. Also, it will be quite mentally draining for you to even clean it nicely.

What you can do is grab a table and try to place your instrument over some bedsheets or anything with an identical texture. 

By all means, the guitar won’t be harmed or chafed in any way by the table’s surface. Correspondingly, it’s just more suitable for you to adequately work on it.

Note: If you are a fan of playing violin, know that violin strings are not quite as sharp as guitar strings.

Removing the Strings Is Critical

Are you planning on doing a deep cleansing of the fretboard? Let’s say that the answer is quite positive. If yes, try to remove all the strings at the same time. Even if you’re not intending on removing them, it will be much more suitable for you to have them all unclogged, ideally. 

If now is your first time doing this, try to reduce each string as much as you can. Then relying on whether you want to utilize them again or not, you would just snip them, or pull them out carefully. This step is certainly valuable so don’t skip it. 

Tip: It is, by all means, vitally important to understand how tight your guitar tuners need to be.

Preparation Is Key

Prior to anything else, we ought to cover the wood. Many people like to use tape or fret protection. So, let’s tackle this in more detail.

If you are nosy about doing it too, then the only thing you need is some kind of strong cardboard that flexes, scissors, and a pen. These are the essentials that we must have near in order to execute this. 

Just go to the last fret of your guitar, and pull some ratios. Subsequently, cut a hole in the middle, wide enough that it could fit a fret. Occasionally, even after cleaning the whole fretboard, you will find out that the frets are still dirty.

One last thing to keep in mind! You may also utilize a nail file with a tiny amount of toothpaste to cleanse the dirt.

What Oil to Use on an Ebony Fretboard?

Notably, lemon oil is just mineral oil with a lemon scent. Yet, mineral oil can contain hundreds of thousands of various chemical blends. Relying on where it arrives from, it can have an extensive scope of volatility, but none of it dries that fast.

Perhaps stay away from olive oil. It could be treated to not rot, but the type you purchase at the supermarket would be a terrible idea. The idea isn’t to moisten the wood so much as to save it. Grocery-grade olive oil would do the contrary. Try to use double-boiled linseed oil or low-molecular mineral oil.

What Oil to Use on a Rosewood Fretboard?

Straightforward, pure mineral oil is great for this type of fretboard, by all means. It is good for incomplete rosewood, ebony, and maple fretboards.

What many people have been using for years is plain mineral oil. It’s the same thing you can drink as a laxative.

What Oil to Use on a Maple Fretboard?

Maple fretboards have a soft finish with an impervious layer. Generally speaking, maple fretboards do not really require fretboard oiling. Yet, what happens if your guitar has an unfinished maple fretboard?

In that case, it can nonetheless benefit from a soft application of plain oil 1-3 times per year.

Tip: We should be mindful and know that tuning up a guitar does not have to be bad. This is especially correct if you know what you are doing.

When Should You Oil Your Electric Guitar Fretboard?

As a general rule of thumb, to keep your guitar in perfect condition for the rest of its life, always wipe down the neck and fretboard after each session.

Remember to oil the fretboard of your electric guitar (if it is unvarnished) every six months. This is a fact!