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Not for the first time, I made a bone nut today for a vintage Fender guitar, cursed Leo and wondered “why did he have this bright idea that a nut should have a curved bottom”? So, I went to Google and looked for an answer — came up empty.

Any one have any idea how this came about?


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I always assumed (you know thats a mistake) that they cut the nut slot after radiusing the f/b and whatever kind of router jig followed the radius. That's a pain for the nut but pretty nice if fret slots are the same depth all the way across. I believe that some of the after market necks have flat bottoms on the nut slots.

freeman got the reason correct, all slots cut after the board is radiused.

A quick easy way to make a nut with a bottom that fits perfectly is to place a piece of stick on sandpaper on the FB between the nut slot and 1st and use that to sand the bottom to shape. Takes but a few seconds.

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Sure, I can see that machining a slot with curved bottom during shaping of the neck is straightforward, but making a flat bottom is hardly difficult, and surely would be easier than making tiny nuts with accurately matched bottoms.

My process has been to draw a radius on the thicknessed nut with an appropriate fret caul, rough out on my combo spindle sander, then finish on sandpaper over the FB. Not so quick that my mind doesn’t have time to ask ... why?


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