Official Luthiers Forum!

Now using the correct nut file for each respective string rough in the remaining 4 string slots:

UPDATE: If you files bind when cutting these slots that are pretty deep initially since we have not removed material from the top of the nut yet scrape the slot sides holding the files a bit sideways on the down stroke and this will relieve the binding. It's also useful for enlarging slots for that next larger gauge of strings.

I like to tune the guitar to pitch at this point. Even though we are not going to cut the slots all the way yet it’s not a bad habit to get into to tune the guitar and retune as required while cutting nut slots. More on why later:

For now my intent is to cut the nut slots nearly to full depth but not all the way. During this process I will also be increasing the pitch of each string trying to keep the guitar nearly in tune.

Since I didn’t have a free hand or a helper when I did this I don’t have a picture for you. But what I want to talk about next is the angle that your nut slots should be cut in respect to the plane of the fret board.

Frank Ford has a very good suggestion which is to note the head stock angle set-back, in this case 15 degrees, and divide that by 2 and endeavor to cut your slots in the 7-8 degree angle from the fret board plane. This is what I do as well. I also try to angle the file a bit more toward the head stock at the back of the nut slot (side toward the head stock). This is so as to keep the string from riding on a high part of the slot and not making contact with the slot bottom at the face of the nut.

Be very careful though and if you do round the back side of your nut slots never exceed the 15 degree head stock angle or a slip of the file may gouge the head stock…

The goal for a well cut slot is for the string to be in full contact with the bottom of the slot as the string launches into space off the nut face. If the forward most position of the slot is lower than the rest of the slot the string will not make contact at the nut face and you have succeeded in elongating the string and intonation and other problems my occur.

If you don’t know a method for how deep to cut nut slots here is one for you.

You can check if a nut slot is deep enough (or too deep….) simply and quickly by doing the following: Making sure that the string is all the way seated in the slot by pressing the string right in front of the nut and visually observing the bottom of the nut slot be sure that your strings are seated all of the way. It’s very easy to cut a nut slot that is too narrow for your string and the string will hang up in the slot. Since you don’t see the action improving you cut the slot deeper and deeper… In short order your slot is too deep, the string is hung up, and now the nut is useless and you have to start over…

To avoid this unfortunate occurrence while cutting nut slots frequently (I check with every 3-6 swipes of the file) check by doing the following:

Fret and hold the string between the second and third fret. Observe the strings height over the first fret and using your finger tap the string between the nut and first fret. The string should NOT lay on the top of the first fret – this is too low. Our goal here is to cut the slots so that the string is ever so slightly clearing the first fret but not touching it. This is dicey at times in as much as the difference between a high nut slot and a perfect nut slot can be only a very few swipes of the file. Please note: It is all too easy to cut the slots too low so be careful!

When the string is still not touching the top of the first fret while fretting between the 2nd and 3rd fret what you want to see is just the tiniest of gaps between the top of the first fret and the bottom of the string. This gap can be so very tiny that you might not always be able to see it but instead see some light through the gap. Another way to observe this is to listen for a “tink” sound that comes from the string hitting the top of the fret when you press between the nut and the first fret and are fretting the string between the 2nd and 3rd frets.

This is actually in my opinion where cutting nut slots properly becomes a bit of an art that one will develop the touch over time. Don’t be discouraged if you cut too far and have to make a new nut – we all have.

The feel that the player will receive while playing a guitar with skillfully cut nut slots is well worth learning to do this correctly. In fact just making a few nuts with the goal being to learn to make nut correctly is well worth the time and effort.

These nut slots are nearly cut to final depth. I have left them a few swipes high on purpose and will do the final cutting once the nut is shaped and the guitar is strung up.

As promised a word about keeping the guitar tuned to proper pitch while cutting nut slots.

Since the head stock of many guitars is angled back and/or strings angle downward after the nut in practice a nut slot may end up crossing the line that we drew on the nut face indicating the fret height. As the string breaks over the nut from the head stock toward the neck there is an ever so slight bending of the string that happens where it leaves the nut face. As the string’s angle changes from the 15ish degrees to the plane of the fret board the string leaves the slot and rises ever so slightly before assuming the plane of the fret board. This is why nut slots may at times be cut below fret height and still be well cut slots.

The pitch and tension of the strings will determine how much of this bending from the nut face the string wants to do. If your strings are slack when cutting nut slots the read that you receive will be inaccurate. The same holds true for strings that are over tensioned.

If you suffer from hypertension take a few deep breaths we are going to do something messy next…

In the picture above the excess nut height is being filed away on the guitar, fully strung. When I first saw this done it made me very nervous but I assure you that this is a great method to accomplish this task safely, accurately, and quickly. Do be aware that you are using a metal file on a finished guitar and always observe the number one rule of guitar repair – do no harm….

Support the guitar and guitar’s neck well and use a fairly fine cutting file. The goal here is to indeed file the nut’s top down to the point where you are actually contacting the file with the tops of some or all of the strings. At first your slots will fill up with dust and then you will start to hear metallic, ugly noises and the bone dust in the slots will be replaced by shiny strings that you are now mutilating… Stop when you make contact with the string – please…

It is not uncommon to use 2-3 sets of strings during the set-up of a guitar. They are considered expendable by many repair and building pros. Remember – buy strings in bulk whenever possible…

Once you have stopped palpating and you have exposed metal of the strings while filing the top of your nut it’s time to put the file down and cut the now useless string off your ax.

If you recall we marked the nut in respect to the neck, fret board, and head stock overlay. Now it’s time to fit the nut ends to the contours of the guitar.

After removing the bulk of the excess material the nut is trial fitted:

Here is where your artist’s eye will come into play. I use a file to shape the hard edges of the nut and try to additionally shape the nut so as to be pleasing to the eye and functional.

Once the shaping with the file is complete I move to 220 grit sandpaper. Be sure to get all of the file marks out with the 220 grit – later grits will not remove file marks as well.

But before I do I have intentionally written on the nut in three places where I do NOT want to sand the nut. These places, if sanded, will ruin the great fit that we worked so very hard to achieve earlier. The marked locations include the nut face, bottom of the nut, and where we traced the head stock over lay onto the back of the nut.

One of my very favorite tasks when working with bone is to get out the Micro-mesh pads and shine my nuts and saddles…

Micro-mesh can make a bone part look jeweled and give it a very polished look. Although using a buffer is faster I find it enjoyable to spend 20 minutes polishing my bone parts. It’s one of those immediate gratification things I suppose….

Do be sure to not sand any of the areas that we marked.

Hey, hey it’s CA (super glue) time… I use medium CA for gluing nuts. A well fitted nut really needs very little glue at all. We do glue them so that in the event that one of our customers changes their strings and their nut falls off we don’t get an impassioned, panicked call at 3:00 AM…

With CA only two very small drops are required and I place these drops in the crotch of the fret board end and the neck’s nut slot. Medium CA will tack in place in about 5-8 seconds so work carefully, use very little, and all will go well.

I like to make a puddle of CA on scrap and then use a tooth pick to apply the CA.

UPDATE: These days it's one drop of "slow..." CA for me on the fret board end. I like slow because it gives me more time to be sure the nut is perfectly positioned.

Also use of accelerator can "cloud" the nut slots. Although this will go away in a few days if the client is picking up in short order I may not use accelerator so that the nut looks great at once.

Man I did this toot way back then.....

Be sure to also clean out any dust from your nut slot prior to gluing the nut.

Before gluing the nut now is the time to erase any remaining pencil marks and writing on your nut.

Are you getting excited???

And here we are with our nut now made and glued in place. Note the jeweled look that the Micro-mesh created in the surfaces of the nut.

Back to present day.... These days I would grade my own nut made in the toot as only a C effort. What I don't like about it is as follows:

1) The side fit could be better and ultimately I want all side surfaces flush with the guitar lines and shape. Although this guitar is a difficult shape to mimic... I could have done better....

2) The nut is too chunky for my taste these days. More material could have been removed from the back with a more profound back bevel.

3) If you look at the back of the nut that "do not sand" line shows and is crooked. In a perfect world the line should have been hidden (and straight...) by the top edge of the headstock overlay....

4) The back nut side edges are too sharp and more material should have been removed here too blending in the corners with the back of the nut. Oh well, live and learn....

Dave is WAY faster than me making nuts and I still kind of sort of plod along but I am faster and more precise than I used to be. Dave can do a great nut in 20 minutes.... me..... an hour plus.....

Also this is timely because we just received an email that will be placed on our web site from a client who I made a nut for earlier this week. He's given us permission to use his name although I avoid doing that out of respect for folks and only use the last initial.

What's rather funny to me about this email(s) is that nut making is my least favorite thing to do..... I want to be faster at it and am getting faster but still not up to snuff speed wise. What's also funny about this, embarrassing too.... is this client was so very happy with his nut that he contacted Martin over it.... Go figure.....

Anyway here is what he has to say:

Hi Hesh...on the recommendations of a friend, and your reputation online, I brought my Martin to you the other day. It's a good guitar, but you made it 1,000X better. Making a new nut with slightly smaller string spacing, and performing a long overdue setup, you've made this guitar sing. I know you've heard this many times before, but it's better than when I first got it. And it was all done in three hours. I didn't have time to do my Christmas shopping:-)

I can't thank you enough for your work. I feel like you're an old friend I just met. You and Dave run the best shop I've ever encountered, and that includes Martin itself. I'll be coming back after the first of the year for a setup on my D-35. It's just crying to meet you!

Happy Holidays to you both!

P.S. stay away from those new lawyers downstairs;)

Chuck S.
Sterling Hgts. MI.

And his second email to us this week:

Please feel free to use my comments and name any way you see fit. I sent a group email to anyone I know who bends a string, so hopefully a few of my misfit friends will wander in your door soon. I also sent a note to Martin's corporate offices singing your praises. Always good to let the home office know you're doing a good job. Just don't leave Ann Arbor and go running off to Nazareth to work for them! We need you guys here!

Chuck

As you can see nut making is not difficult and it could be said that it's so very easy that even a Hesh can do it....

This toot is offered as "one method........" that nuts can be made. Lots of other ways to do things....

We won't work with anything but bone in our shop, period. No pl*stic crap for us or our clients, ever. We won't even work with after market alternatives believing bone to be superior AND also believing that as you can see a great nut HAS to be specifically made for a specific instrument. Even if someone where to bring us an after market nut the effort required to fit it perfectly and make it work is really no more effort for us than making a bone nut from scratch.

Hopefully something here will be of value to folks AND feel free to ask questions, etc.

Many thanks and as always thanks for lookin!

One more thing that I wanted to add:

Thursday I worked on a well-known small builder guitar that back in it's day was a top tier offering. The nut had been dovetailed into the slot..... making it nearly impossible to remove without any damage to the instrument....

Not good.... and it's my hope that the idea of serviceability will always..... take a lead role in your decisions as to how you build your very fine creations. Like it or not someday you may not be the one servicing your own stuff and instead some wayward repair person such as I will be tasked with fixing something. If very high value is high on your list of things to provide your clients please consider serviceability in time in all that you do and produce. An instrument that has been built with serviceability in mind will be desirable over one that is not. Folks may keep a guitar for the rest of their days and I often hear from clients that the guitar is very much a part of them now. As such let's endeavor to have the value that we provide be a "gift" that keeps on giving for decades to come.

Thanks!

Great tutorial. Thanks, Hesh

Hesh

Great toot - thanks. When you make the initial, first cuts into the nut with files, how deep do you go. Hard to tell, but it looks like a couple of them are actually BELOW the pencil when I am thinking they should all be a hair above the line.

Ed

Thanks, Hesh. It's always nice to see how other people go about these various tasks. Very well presented here and easy to understand. Thanks again!
Patrick

Hesh
Well put together tutorial. Many thanks,

Mike

Hi Ed and Happy Holidays to you and yours!

The initial cut is simply a light scoring of the nut top with a file that is not very flexible such as the .016." The initial scoring is to get the spacing right and started and to provide a grove for subsequent files to follow without wandering. The next step is with the instrument strung to pitch making the secondary cuts to near final depth.

The final cut is only made after the nut is finished, polished, installed and again the instrument is strung to pitch and the truss rod is adjusted for optimal relief.

There were two lines on the nut, one is the not to exceed line.... more on this in a minute and the other was simply a line to sand down to on the belt or disc sander removing excess top material. Not sure which line I breached.

Anyway it is possible to cut below the half pencil line and not cut too low because strings ark over the nut. This is why a zero fret of the same, exact height as the other frets won't buzz out.

I think I see what you see the A string. The wound strings ark the very most so it's not uncommon to see the cuts below the line for these strings.

"I think I see what you see the A string. The wound strings ark the very most so it's not uncommon to see the cuts below the line for these strings."



Exactly - I never noticed that the slot might end up LOWER then the 1/2 pencil line. Thanks - it all makes sense now.

Ed

Great Tutorial Hesh. I especially like the filing of the top with strings on. Good reason to get some cheap bulk strings. Thanks for your tireless effort to inform us all!!