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So, I finally got a nut right on the first try (sound). I was studying what I had to do to get them right and almost always, it involved angling towards the tuning post. So on this last one, I scored slots slightly towards posts. And then all the othe usual angling. Worked like a charm. Am I crazy? Tribal knowledge?

As is clear in the picture below, lots of work left to do.

U can sort of see it. Very slight.

Your slots are too deep on all strings except the low E... so, not perfect.
Sorry.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Maybe not too deep. Just needs to file the top of the nut down so other strings are set like the low E. Slight angle is OK.

Michael

I hate making nuts. Despite having done so possibly thousands of times, it still sometimes takes several tries. Consequently I charge 40$ for one.

Hate to say it, but I agree with Chris (which is not to say that I hate to agree with Chris). You're on track but not quite finished yet. Wound strings should be about half in and half out of the slot, only the plain strings should be completely buried, and then only exactly so, not deeper.

Otherwise you can get that super annoying binding in the nut that can cause strings to jump pitch and not tune smoothly.

As well, it's generally preferred to have a rounded rather than a sharp profile. The more surface area the strings contact, the longer the nut will last, as tuning and even playing the guitar will erode the surface of the slots.

With the correct nut slot depth, and a good shoulder profile, I've never found it necessary to angle the slots. I've done it and not done it. It seems to make no difference, at least not to me.

Please take that as constructive criticism and not a slag. I've been in the whiskey;)

Here are some of the elements that we teach and look for in well made nuts:

1) Are the slots spaced evenly.

2) Are the slots an appropriate depth. Appropriate depth should not be deeper than say the string diameter. We believe that the 1/2 string depth thing was started back in the day by our friend Dan E. but it's not necessary and full string height is OK too. We know players personally who will rip a 1/2 string diameter depth string right out of the slot and in the middle of a gig this is not a welcome thing....

3) The distance from the E's to the side of the neck AND for the amount of fret bevel is important. You do not want to be too close to radical bevels.....

4) Break angle should be around half the headstock set back angle or greater than 4 degrees or so with no hard rule here. Some folks will say 3 degrees. I like more if I can get it. You want enough break angle to be effective and avoid the G string blues on Fender style bolt-on necks without a second string tree.

5) The nut sides should compliment and blend seamlessly in terms of feel with the contours of the neck, fret board, and head stock. If there is over hang or under hang it's not desirable. Some makers fit the nut ends on the neck with the nut installed and finish the neck with the nut in place. I like this look even though it's a tad.... less serviceable if the finish gets flaky.....

6) Does the nut fit completely without any gaps in the nut channel and if not the nut channel should be trued up first before fitting the nut to an irregular surface.

7) Is the nut minimalistic? Is there a back bevel, is excess material removed, does the nut compliment the lines of the instrument and have an eloquent look to it?

8) Are ALL scratches removed from the nut and is the nut polished to a nice, finished look?

9) Is the nut string spacing appropriate for the specific player if it's a replacement?

10) Although unseen has the nut been glued in place with just a small drop of glue on the end of the fret board? We don't want a nut potted in glue and it should be easy to remove with a simple "tonk" of a fretting hammer with a bridge blank or other small board against the nut.

These are some of the criteria that we judge our students nuts that they make in class by. Since we guide them every step of the way their nuts are usable usually the first time and pretty nice too.

However if it takes folks lots of nuts to get-it welcome to the club. In another school that we are familiar with students are briefed that it can take 100 nuts to really start to know what a great nut is.

Mike here is what can be determined by the single photo that you posted and I am only offering this because you asked.

Number 1 above what did you do to determine slot distance and spacing, it may be fine but can't tell from one photo.

Also angled slots are a style, not more correct than straight slots nor are straight slots more correct than angled slots. Regardless of angled or straight the string will eventually have to make the same amount of turn toward the tuner posts, respectively. As such the width of the slots with NO binding makes a straight slots as free of binding as an angled slot. Again angled or straight is simply a style. We personally prefer straight slots and find that to our eyes it's easier to see variance or poor spacing with straight slots.

A caution on V-shaped slots and another reason why they suck. The V-shaped slots can bind because of the string bearing completely on the sides of the "V." Combine this with angled slots or straight slots and binding while tuning can be expected.... Not good.

Number 2 as Chris said some of your slots are too deep. We teach our students to take nut height down on the guitar with strings on. A portable defibrillator has been installed in our shop for this. We file right down to the strings and sacrifice a set of strings which are chump change anyway to make every nut. If available we use the old strings that the instrument came in with to make nuts.

Number 3 is important and unless I can see the fret end bevels on your first fret too I can't tell if the spacing might be too wide here.

Number 4 can't be determined either from the single photo. Slots should also not have a hump in the middle of them and of course that break angle is super important to avoid the sitar sound.

5, 6, 7, 8 also can't be determined from the pic.

Anyway these are some of the criteria that we would be addressing and more in our classes and how we would, if asked, evaluate your nut.

What's great is that you are making nuts and that's in my experience what it will take to get good at it.

In our commercial repair business we won't use anyone's pre-made nut not even for money..... Instead all nuts are made from scratch for the specific instrument from quality bone. We also won't use any of the synthetic materials believing bone to be superior and sustainable.

In our experience commercial nuts have to be fit and the fitting is all compromises and takes as long as making one from scratch specifically fit for the instrument.

Hopefully something here will help you out Mike. Again angling slots is a style and not superior or inferior to not angling.

One last thing to look for. When filing nut slots for depth the string should be worked into the slot after each session with the file.

Why?

Because some files are not as marked and with a combination of poor file technique and an incorrectly marked file it's possible to have a string hung up in a slot and not all the way seated. Usually when this is discovered the slot is already cut too deep.

Other related discussions include filling nut slots and why CA and dust sucks and composite dental fillings, daylight spectrum light cured is a great fix.

Nut material and why we like bone over ALL others.

Traditional nut materials from back in the day.

Sources for nut blanks.

Processing your own bone.

For commercial shops what to charge, how long it takes to make a nut, industry and regional norms.

And one last really, really, really critical thing - nut slot depth.

Very few folks cut nut slots low enough and usually out of fear of blowing the nut and cutting the slot too deep.

We show.... and teach our student why nut compensation regardless of your choice of methods is rarely necessary if the nut slots are cut correctly and low enough. Or, in other words, if you have to press the string excessively because of a high nut slot you will also be pulling it sharp and that results in poor intonation.

I do set-ups every day and the complaint is frequently on a new instrument that the intonation sucks. In combination accurately setting intonation AND cutting to final depth the nut slots 99.9% of the time makes our clients happy as can be. Me too....

After 35 years, I wish I knew how many nuts I have made.... must be well into the thousands by now. I keep trying to get better, too. Haven't made the perfect one yet - but I've made some mighty fine ones. Every once in awhile I will run across a guitar with a nut I made from way back in the day, and I cringe. Like most guitar repair skills - it's a learning process. Keep at it, Mike.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Off topic, but...man do I love TUSQ. 95% of the time it's my go to, except for that once in a blue flowering moon where I think for whatever reason bone sounds better. I hate touching bone, I hate the smell, I almost always hate the sound and consider it a tone suck. So, different strokes.

Mike, I'll defer to Hesh, he walks the talk. Ann Arbor Guitars, head north! I know getting an Alabamian above the Mason Dixon line is a stretch but....... Take a fretting and set up class and never look back.

Hesh--

Reading your excellent advice, it's good to know that my goals in making a nut are the right ones to have! I may not always get there, but I am always shooting for what you have outlined.

I do have one question about gluing the nut in place:

If you assume the nut sits in a slot between the headplate and the fingerboard (not the case on every guitar, but always the case on mine), would you recommend putting the little dots of glue on the bottom of the slot (which is the neck wood), the end of the fingerboard, or both? I've been dotting the bottom of the slot only, but above you mentioned dotting the end of the fingerboard.

Thanks for the guidance!

Hi Don:

Ideally the nut will fit in that prepared and trued up channel so very well that you can lift the guitar neck a foot or so (don't try this without someone to catch it...) off the bench with no glue at all. This is of course with the guitar's butt end still on the bench.

If that's not the case glue becomes more important but nonetheless we only use one tiny drop of medium CA placed on the end of the fret board (slow CA helps geezers like me have more time to position the thing from side to side). The strings are also holding the nut in place when present.

You can use more glue but then when the nut has to be serviced and removed where ever the glue was will be torn up in the channel. More glue is not necessary if the fit is snug as well. And the one drop on the end grain of the fret board won't lift any fibers or do any damage.

Some guitars as you mentioned Don don't have a head plate. The Godin line from Canada which are excellent guitars, Seagull, A&L, etc often don't have head plates so there is no nut channel with a back stop for the nut. Lots of our repair clients bring these things in looking sick, the client not the guitar, because their nuts fell off when they removed all of the strings. We assure them that it's OK and help them get their nuts back on after using a very sharp chisel to clean up the nut channel of old glue.

I am speaking of the guitar by the way......

Don my friend what's important to know about the lengthy criteria that I gave you guys is when it was first given to me I thought to myself "are you nuts" about Dave who taught me this stuff. The bar looked kind of sort of anal and way too high with so very much to consider. But it becomes second nature when you simply spend a day making nuts and pitching them and making another one.

The list above is also rarely in my experience completely met by many commercial shops and if you look hard enough my nuts might over hang a thou too much or may be spaced inconsistently at the 1/1,000th's level. But we do the best we can anyway.

The guy who taught me, Dave Collins also told me that at some schools when a student takes two hours to make their perfect nut the instructor might come along and look at it and say "that's nice" pick it up and throw it in the trash and tell the student to make another one. This is usually done with the statement that it takes about 100 nuts to get it right.

We don't do that to our students and value our teeth...

As builders we only make nuts usually in accordance with our production levels. This never got better than one nut a month for me and the time between making nuts was so great that I tended to forget what I had just learned.....

Anyway great question and the one little drop of glue on the end of the fret board I'll correctly attribute to our friend Frank Ford.

But have no ACTUAL proof.

Bone has been the choice of string instrument makers for over 100 years.
If it sucked, you'd think SOMEONE would have noticed by now.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I like the feel and look of unbleached bone.
Not sure why, but I always make a better nut using unbleached bone.

I wanted to make a pearl nut, but it seems so uncommon that I figure there's a good reason not to.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I'm with Dan on unbleached bone. Seems less brittle and I like its translucency, among other things. Sure do miss ivory, though.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Unbleached bone fan here too. It's said that unbleached averages 10% harder then bleached but we have not done the testing on this one yet to be sure.

Bone is harder than ivory BTW and just in terms of suitability for a guitar nut in our view bone wins out over ivory. Add in availability, the cavity search that one gets like it or not when crossing an international border with an ivory nut on your ax favors using bone too.... Not to mention having your ax seized by customs and having to post thousands in bond to get it out.

Back to Tusq - it's a great material too we just like bone better and in terms of who's asking us in the upgrade market for Tusq we likely get asked for bone 10 to 1 over all other alternatives combined.

Bone does stink though and my old pal Sony RIP used to nearly have a heart attack when I sanded bone. He would run in circles slinging drool..... Reminded me of a Dead Head back in the day when a new Jerry tour was announced. I've been known to drool too but I digress....

Yeah, processing raw bone in our house stopped after one time. The dogs acted like heroin addicts. Never again. I just buy processed blanks and am happier for it.

But have no ACTUAL proof.

Correct, which is why it's an opinion, and I get to have it.

Do you ever have anything nice to say?

I meant "tonally". Slots can't be "too" deep (or buzz happens). There can be excess bone above the correctly set height.

My main point was slot orientation.

I use the stewmac slot ruler

Mike

Sure, Mike. I've said nice stuff up and down this forum.... And some of it was to you.
Your nut looks nice, BUT the slots are too deep.
Maybe you'd like it better if I said it wasn't perfect YET.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

From a minimizing sharp bends and wear point of view, I think correcting half of the angle would make sense.

If you angle them right at the post, all the course correction happens at the forward face of the nut.

I've always cut them straight. My reasoning was keeping the spacing more even over time and different string gauges.
Theoretically, a full angle has the D and G still arching toward one another after the face of the nut. probably not significant. Just my habit.

Any day now Stew Mac will be coming out with a set (maybe multiple sets!) of curved nut files to finally remedy the problem.

I'm sure your slot depth is perfect Mike!
I think Chris is trying to say he feels your nut top is too high.

Once many moons ago when either David or you mentioned this I took the off cuts of the strings and taped them together, set apart by the nut spacing I most typically use. When filing down the top of the nut to get the string exposure height right, I put the string set in place and file away, pulling the string set out, put it back when fine tuning. There are always more string off cuts than you'll ever need and no need for the defibrillator use if you file through the string to make it snap. I know my method doesn't account for the string tension but personally I don't think that will make enough of a difference to matter.

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

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In my opinion the three most important factors in making a nut are string spacing, cutting the slots at the right angle and depth. Well done if you accomplished those three.

Does that make it perfect? That's a judgement call so who knows?

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust