cuttin a nut

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travelin travis

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no......not bustin a nut. now that's outa the way.

how hard is it actually do your own nut. ok, that does'nt sound good either...... :D

is it very difficult to shape and slot a guitar nut? recommended tools and required reading? i've made the adjustments on my guitars for as long as i can remember but never tried a nut. i remember reading in a guitar maintenance book that it's pretty easy to screw up.

while we're at it, how about fret leveling?
 
You can get all the tools and complete instructions at stewmac.com. They have a kit for $175-ish. There are about $75 worth of mandatory files, for cutting the slots, and a .010 saw, the other stuff, you could probably live without. I've fiddled with slot depths to good effect, but never shaped a nut from a blank. In general, go slow, you can't put material back that you have taken off! Otherwise, not technically difficult, albeit highly critical work.
 
I've made a number of nuts, and dressed others with nothing more than a hacksaw, some needle files of different configurations, exacto knife or razor blade, and sandpaper or emery cloth.

I'd suggest going to your local hardware store and buying a small piece of about 1/4 inch hard plastic to practise on, since bone for a nut costs $10 or so. Practise making a few, then buy some bone and make the one for your guitar. You're not going to hurt anything, other than waste some time.

Here's a thread on some materials:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=173348

Here's some info on nuts - look at the rest of the site also:
http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Musician/GenSetup/Nuts/nuts1.html

Enjoy!
 
I usually just shade the areas that I'm sanding down with pencil, give's you a better visual of what you're doing. You can do without nut files and use some needle files and leftover string clippings (for measurement) in a pinch. As far as string spacing, you could pick up the ruler StewMac sells, or just use your original as a guide. If you cut it too low, all is not lost (to a point). Have some thin shims of wood laying around and you'll be alright. For shaping, I have a little clamp that I like to put nuts in (heh :D), and I just work the sand paper around, rounding off the top edges. WIth bone, I like to have these little MicroMesh sticks around (they look like the ones you use for your nails) to polish it up. Have fun, and buy an extra blank just to be safe.
 
i can't really imagine myself buying $175 worth of tools to make my own nut. i think i will try this with some needle files and some cheap plastic blanks for practice. thanks for the info.
 
Home Depot sells a set of files for $15. You really do need the proper gauge file though. Stew mac sells the right ones. I'm left handed, so I've had to customize a couple of right haded guitars. I hate it. I'm lucky I have a friend who is a gunsmith, he has all the files and shit. I would have a luthier with the right files do it.
 
I' don't won't to make my own nut to save some cash. I just want to be able to do it for the self satisfaction. At the same time I don't want to spend a fortune on some tools that I will only use every great once in awhile. No what I mean?
 
You can get some blank nuts at Stewart Macdonald real cheap, graphite, bone, plasitc, but I think they have a minimum order of like $25. When I was younger I used the wound strings to "saw" the groove! :eek:
 
You can use the Home Depot files on a blank bridge saddles too.
 
Gnash5150 said:
You can get some blank nuts at Stewart Macdonald real cheap, graphite, bone, plasitc, but I think they have a minimum order of like $25. When I was younger I used the wound strings to "saw" the groove! :eek:
Click to expand...

Start it with a sharp knife, and just work that sucker in there! :D

I'd get the thin saw and maybe the first one or two double-sided files from stew-mac, and the needle file set. It's easy enough to make a thin slot wider. The other stuff you can absolutely live without. $40-50 total.
 
For cutting the slots I use a coping saw, blades come in sizes as small as .003 and up to as much as .060 and almost any size in between. I use Lazar blades (the round ones designed to cut in any dirrection) because they leave the bottom of the slot round instead of flat. I cut the slots about .001 to .002 larger than the intended guage of the string to prevent sticking. If you get the slot too wide or too flat in the bottom you might get an annoying buzz in open chord positions.
 
Dani Pace said:
For cutting the slots I use a coping saw, blades come in sizes as small as .003 and up to as much as .060 and almost any size in between. I use Lazar blades (the round ones designed to cut in any dirrection) because they leave the bottom of the slot round instead of flat. I cut the slots about .001 to .002 larger than the intended guage of the string to prevent sticking. If you get the slot too wide or too flat in the bottom you might get an annoying buzz in open chord positions.
Click to expand...

Cool tip on the coping saw!
 
I've made a lot of guitar nuts. Shaping the nut is easier if you have a small belt sander though you can do it without. A bench vise, even a small, cheap one is great if doing the general shaping manually.

I found bone very different to work than the various types of man-made materials that one finds. I'd get a few bone blanks and practice cutting string slots in them if you want the final to be bone. Especially when cutting the string slots, it's critical to have a feel for the amount of material that'll be removed with each stroke of the file or saw to avoid blowing the nut (cutting a slot too low). Marking the slots accurately is tough enough, but avoiding file drift as you're cutting the slots is the real challenge.

Be sure to protect the peghead and fingerboard surfaces while filing the slots with the nut on the guitar. And for holding the guitar firmly while doing that, it's easy to make a very stable neck support out of 4x4 material with a V slot cut in it, padded with a bit of carpet. Easiest to cut the string slots with special nut files that have exact diameters, but you can do it with the cheap needle files you can get at Home Depot if very careful, but don't use the tapered ones - use ones that have a consistent width to the cutting edge. Exacto saws with a very fine cut work OK for the unwound strings but go very slow as they cut fast.

Tim
 
found "frets" in my search too Light. thanks for posting though. there's alot of good info there.
 
You can get a set of Oxy Acetelyene welder tip cleaners from... well I guess harbour freight for the americans here, they're like little round files of varying sizes in a metal box. They'll do in a pinch. Crimson guitars has an awesome video about cutting nuts on youtube. On gibsons you need to angle the file to the angle of the headstock, on a fender or other flat-headstock guitar, best practice is filing each string slot at the angle the string would initially contact the tuning peg.
 
Hi, I've made a few nuts this year from mostly bone blanks, though I did a couple of synthetic ones first. It wasn't something I consciously chose to get in into, more a case of me picking up one of my acoustics and accidentally pinched the low E with my palm and then had a section of the nut fly off at speed. As that guitar was set up quite well I wanted to replicate the original nut as close as possible. I used some boards with various grades of sandpaper and needle files to shape the nut, the slots for the strings were started with a fine serrated knife I then used strings for each of the slots where the wound strings sit to cut the grooves, lubricating with beeswax, the others were done with the knife and folding thin, fine glass paper in two and using the folded edge to remove small amounts of material. I took the nut on and off the guitar many times at the final stage so I could get the nut as good as possible and actually bettered the original in respect of ease of playing. I found that different truss rod tension vs string height at the nut was a game worth playing hence I made a few nuts to experiment with. It was tedious and dusty and yes a few power tools would have been really useful but I don't plan on making them for fun so not an issue. I'm a bit OCD so the idea of a guitar being broken motivated me to crack on and do it, yes I could buy one but the hunting for one the correct size was even more tedious.

All the best

Tim
 
I'm just going to tusq xl's for my guitars for the time being, I don't suppose anyone has used an LSR roller nut and can say if it improved the tone or not. I'm planning on doing a bespoke nickel nut, if they sell it in extrusions or solid tube thick enough to cut a nut from.
 
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