Tokai fretless bass fingerboard restoration

This vintage 80's Tokai bass was brought in the workshop after being shipped in from Japan.
The bass had been poorly converted into a fretless, the previous owner must of ripped the frets out, leading to large amounts of tearout on the wood.
The fretslots had then been filled with white filler, which had spread into the surrounding tearout, causing large patches of white all over the board. The board was also in very poor condition and was very dry, obviously had been neglected for sometime.
Below is details on our restoration of the  fingerboard.

The amount of damage to the board was horrifying with the filler used all over the board filling the tearout. The filler that had been used was breaking down into a powder but it had spread into the surrounding wood.
As well,  the board had deep grooves where round wound strings had been used instead of flat wounds, all this damaged needed to be sorted. 

The filler carefully was removed and the slots cleared before the board could be prepped for the new maple inserts, you can see the removed filler either side of the board.

Before the board restoration could continue a nasty separation of the board from the neck had to be dealt with , this was caused by the age of the board and how dry the wood was. The crack was clamped and glued, left to dry then cleaned up ready for the next step to begin

The tearout and damage to the board was filled with a mixture of woodglue and rosewood sawdust!

The board after the first pass of filling the damage and tearout, this process had to be repeated several times after the excess had been removed, due to the state of the board and the previously used filler had soaked into the wood surrounding the fret slots, causing further problems.

While working on the board, another crack became apparent that needed to be fixed before work could continue.

These photos show the process during the filling process and removing the excess filler. Once the damage was filled, the board was sanded smooth, removing the string grooves at the same time.

Once the board was ready, the next step was filling the slots with maple veneer as the new fret markers, these were cut over sized and glued in, before being cut back to the board and sanded smooth. 

The final stages of the restoration, the main work has been done, with just some detail work needed on the edges of the board before it can be treated with a health amount of lemon oil to give some much needed moisture to the wood!
Below are some photos of the finished project, the customer collected the bass, and fitted a new scratchplate and some roundwound strings, before bringing it back to us for a setup!