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I've only built a handful of necks and most of them have been roasted maple fretboards. This time around I am using a beautiful and incredibly stiff/hard piece of ebony. I am doing a light hammering in of the frets to get them seated and then using the hand-held vice clamps from Stewmac with the correct fretboard radius to push them down evenly the rest of the way.

This process works just fine on roasted maple. It's just a softer wood that seems to be more forgiving in general.

I am trying the same process ebony and man.......same frets, same size fret slots as I normally do......I REALLY struggle to get them seated with a hammer. Then trying to use the clamps to seat it the rest of the way......it's just not working.

I've tried widening the fret slots a bit and it helps but it's far from perfect.

Any tips or tricks that I'm missing here? Thank you!