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I was rummaging through my pile of FB and came up with abt 10 slotted ebonyFB that I got from a friend in st louis abt 15 yrs ago.Since I am not a prolific builder of SS. still working on my first one . How common is this scale, and what scale do you use ,or do you have a favorite one?.I think the FB/s came from alvaraez.thanks

They could have been Martin 25.34's when slotted and now the ebony has moved slightly?
It's only 0.14%

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I measured it with a digital micrometer, and checked it against my ibex fret rule, that/s why I posed the question.Am not vy knowledgeable abt SS fret scales just know uke/CL. But now that you mentioned it I checked the bsmt, and we/ve had a lot of rain this spring .Even with my soleus dehumidifier its like%55. abt 10 more than I like . Would a difference of .035 make that much of a difference?? i.e. martin .340 alvaraez.375. I could have miscalculated ,it/s awful dark today .Will recheck.Thanks.

640mm is my personal favorite scale.
Is 642mm your estimated compensated length?
Anyway, that basically translates to 25 1/4" I believe, which I (believe) is Yamaha scale?
Regardless, it makes a very comfortable fingerboard, which I would personally put on any model except parlours and perhaps OO's....
I use 25 1/2", 640mm, 25", 24 3/4", as provided by LMI slotting templates....

I don/t know what scale my fretting templates for ss are I have 2 and never used them .I was just taking the measurements off the slotted fb.I/m guesssing that they are from the 70/s. I just measured from the middle front of the fb to the middle of the 12 th fret. and figured it was double that to the middle of the bridge and guessed that it was 642 , your probably right as I think the alvaraez fb/s were probably made in Korea and copied the yamaha 640mm scale??

Measuring scale length from the assumed nut position is probably OK, but I'd check from the first fret slot as well to be sure. (The Stewmac fret position calculator can generate the numbers for a 642mm scale.)

I would research whether Yamaha is 640mm.
My comment was a guess. It may very well be 25 1/4", or something different.
Any way you slice it, whatever your boards are will be good for SS....

You also need to make sure the board is perfectly flat/straight when you measure it or else it will be off.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

If you add half the fret slot width to the end of board (commonly the nut location is cut on the centreline) then you are getting very close to 25.4"

642, 640 what does it matter. Anyway, that Ibex rule isn't the most accurate. At least mine isn't.