Here's what I look at every night before I go to sleep for close to a month while waiting for additional stuff to come in...
Finally, a few more stuff came and it was possible to continue...
Crudely checking if the fretboard is as flat as possible...
Started with 120 grit sand paper...
After a few passes, lots of lacquer powder. I don't push the radius block to the fretboard while sanding, just making sure it is flat and letting it's own weight do the work and sliding it from end to end.
Vacuum cleaner was on standby for clean-up. Wasn't able to take a picture but I also clean the sandpaper with the vacuum cleaner so it doesn't clog up too much.
After several passes... Notice the uneven portions. I guess partly because of uneven lacquer layer and/or warp.
After more passes, it is getting more even and the amount of sanded dust also became lesser
And after more passes, it looks more even...
Marked the board with pencil marks to double check if there are still uneven portions...
After a few sanding passes, I observed the pencil marks were getting removed evenly. After all the pencil marks were removed, shifted to 220-grit sand paper.
After two rounds of sanding passes, here's the final outcome...
As reminded by free2rock, I ran a file through each slot to aid in easier fretwire insertion and help the fret wire seat properly (the undersides of the fret crown where it joins the tang is not "flat")
Proceeded to hammer in the frets... First, I cleaned the fret wire.
Then I put Elmer's Glue All into the slots with the aid of a used guitar 1st string
The fret wire I got was pre-radius 9.5" (too near 10") and should have bought ones with tighter radius. So, I couldn't really follow hammering ends first before running the hammer up/down the middle.
I didn't want to bother re-radiusing the current wire so what I did was just hammer it from one end to the other while firmly holding the wire and then going back and forth and closely inspecting if it has seated properly.
After a few fret wire installations that are about the width of the shorter 10" radius block I bought, I clamp it over the frets and wait for the glue to dry. I used some scrap silicon rubber sheet so the fret wire will not put indentations into the wood.
To be continued... Watching MotoGP and Wimbledon for now.
Thanks for reading.