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When I cut my fretboard at the nut I didn`t realize the chop saw wasn`t square to the fence.Any way When I squared it back up this left me about a strong 64Th to a shy 32Nd short between the nut and the first fret of course.I remember in previous posts some builders have talked about cutting the board short in this location ,but I can`t remember the reasoning.Am I okay? or should I make another board.Frets are cut.I think I`m gonna have to dedicate a saw just for guitar work.We`ve been doing cabinetery for business so that`s what happened,and I assumed it was square.What a dumb butt. This should have been posted in the guitar building forum. Sorry.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Why not just make a compensated nut, if it's a personal build?

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Not a personal build.Never made one .Can you explain this to me.I`ve never quite understood the purpose of a compensated nut.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

You could turn it into a bound fingerboard, though I question that doing that will save any time over simply making a new one.

Taylor guitars are generally about .015" short from the nut to the first fret. Bob claims it improves intonation, though readily admits it was initially an accident.

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Brian

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

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

I`m at about .020 right now I think.My old eyes would say it`s about a 1/2 mm.So maybe i`m okay.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

I just wrote a reply and probably hit the wrong button,
so here goes again!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I took a short class with guitarist Steve Kimock.
He plays regular guitar, and lap steel.
He showed us how on the 2nd, 4th and 11th or 10th fret,
when played in tune, the bar was south of the fret marker.
I noticed this before, because I play lap steel, but didn't know why this was the case.
Buzz Feiten has created a system, where the nut is moved in the direction where yours is.
Kind of spitting the difference for all the frets.
Make any sense?
Might be a mistake for the better.

We compensate at the saddle because a string under tension is a straight line, the shortest distance between 2 points, press it against a fret, no longer straight or the shortest distance. When the sting is played open, we don't need the compensation at the saddle, but it is still there, so we compensate the nut to correct for this. The simplest method of compensating a nut is to just remove 1mm from the nut to first fret, enjoy your happy accident. Compensating the nut can be more involved, I will leave that for the more knowledgeable.

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We compensate at the saddle because a string under tension is a straight line, the shortest distance between 2 points, press it against a fret, no longer straight or the shortest distance. When the sting is played open, we don't need the compensation at the saddle, but it is still there, so we compensate the nut to correct for this. The simplest method of compensating a nut is to just remove 1mm from the nut to first fret, enjoy your happy accident. Compensating the nut can be more involved, I will leave that for the more knowledgeable.

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http://www.kalimbakit.com/
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So do I add the 1/2 mm amount back in th distance from the 12th fret to the saddle,plus the normal saddle compensation,Or just double the distance from the nut to the 12th that exists now and add the normal compensation.

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Neither.
It may help to change perspective for a few minutes when wrapping your head around this, think of the 12th fret as 0, and scale length is measure from there in both directions with separate compensation factors, so for 25" scale length, for the saddle is 12.5 + X, and the nut is 12.5 - X from 0 (12 fret). Once you compensate the nut, it is no longer a proper place to measure scale length from, scale length has to be measured from the 12th fret now. The only thing you need to change now is that you may need a larger nut to make up for the lost space on the neck.

This is a simplified explanation, Trevor Gore's book has details on this, I look forward to reading it at some point. I learned this in the C Fox class, it took a while for me to get it, my aha was when I began to think as above. I have done this twice on builds now, both on the challenge thread I did, the last guitar I finished I forgot when using the table saw fret slot template and had the opposite question, should I trash the fb because I did not remove something from the nut to first fret. I used a 0 fret so my fixes would have been fill and reslot or ditch the 0 fret and use a very large nut, I just left it and moved on.
Rob

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http://www.kalimbakit.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/comfyfootgr ... ature=mhee
http://www.facebook.com/robert.renick.7