Official Luthiers Forum!

You are very welcome and thanks for the thanks!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Ka-Ching! Thanks Hesh….almost 9 years after your re-post!
Very difficult to master nuts when you only make a handful. I blew the string spacing on the one I’m making but I’m going to go ahead and finish it out for the experience. No need to get in a rush at this point. Pound for pound, this is the most difficult piece of an acoustic to get right. Respect my friend…….

Marked the slot positions with a string spacing scale. I started the slot with an exacto, followed with a razor saw before moving to a fret file. Part of the problem was that I cut the nut to height before the string slots or I could have recovered. I’ll replace the exacto step with a nut file slightly narrower than the scale slot width. And I am going with Hesh’s one-diameter slot depth too….

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Hey Karl thanks for finding this!

What I do is use the SM ruler and I've learned that I can redirect my files for errors that I am making in the space between the slots and walk them to where they need to be.

I had a lot of trouble with nut making so don't feel bad my friend. As a builder we only have the opportunity to make a nut when we finish a new build. Doing fretting is the same, limited deal. Build one a year, that's one nut a year and that's pretty hard to learn and even remember what we've learned.

I don't subscribe to this but I was told a story that is true I've had it verified by the way that at one school, professional Lutherie school it's said you need to make about 100 nuts before you really start to get good and quick at it. You work your tail off for two hours have an great nut and the instructor comes over, picks up the nut, looks at it, says "that's nice" throws it in the trash bin and walks away.

WTH

Anyway I prefer positive reinforcement over the trash bin but the take away from this is that nice, minimalistic, eloquent nut that functions perfectly is NOT easy to make.

Onward and upward

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Ann Arbor Guitars