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Hey all,

Recently bought a used guitar on Reverb that was supposedly EXE++ condition but I think I was a bit bamboozled. I didn't do much with it for 30 days or so, and think I'm probably stuck with what I got. Rather than whine about it, and because I'm getting better and lutherie and want to learn more anyway, I decided not to whine about it and I'll try to fix the issues myself if I can.

I already gutted the wiring and switches and pickups (don't like the stock pickups) and the mini-alpha pots were so tiny I couldn't get the new pickups to solder in correctly. I think I fried one of the pots by overheating it, and then realized the shafts are so tiny I'd have to either get new mini-alphas or drill out the holes. Deciding that i wanted to make this a project, I get a reamers that goes from a taper to a straight 3/8" and carefully widened the holes without disrupting the finish, put in a very lovely set of Bourns pots, Zoso caps, brilliant sounding humbuckers, have it all wired perfectly, and I'm good to go with that!

The seller did, however, probably stuff something into the nut slots on the big E and A slots to make the action appear OK. When I first removed the strings some black wood pieces fell out of those slots and when I got new strings on it, those two strings were hopelessly low at the nut and no amount of bridge/truss adjustment could remedy it.

So I want to dig out the nut, which is like a G-style guitar nut. I've only done Tele style nuts before, which are much simpler by comparison and usually require no digging around and don't need glue to hold them in. Any tips or tutorials you can point me to that might be helpful? I'd like to do a bone blank and use the old one to get the slot locations correct but then file from there. Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I make nuts the same way for any guitar. Its basically shown on post #94 on page 5 of this.

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/sitka-and ... 644/page-5

I've also done a little thread on doing setups - there is a section on making nuts at pst #22

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/basic-setup.952636/page-2

Edit to add a couple of things. I think it is very important to get the spacing of the outside strings exactly where you as the player wants them. Different techniques (thumb fretting, how you bend) might influence the gap to the edge. Once you have that, the actual string spacing and how you do it is important - you can put the strings on equal centers or you can put equal space between them. The latter is my preference and while the math isn't daunting it doe require a bunch of measuring. The StewMac rule that I show in both those links make it easy to do for almost any instrument - highly recommended.

And I glue all my nuts in with two tiny drops of medium CA - a tap with a hammer and block of wood and they come right out.

ps - most Gibson nuts are 3/16 and you can buy the blanks this thickness. You should measure yours first however. I like to get my blanks slightly thicker and bring them down to fit the slot - a belt sander works well but warning, it stinks.

Do you have pictures of the nut, or where the nut used to be?

Freeman's advice is always excellent. I was in the middle of writing my post up when his showed up, but I'll post mine anyway since I was pretty much finished.

To remove a les paul nut, I've sawed it down the middle (taking care not to saw into the wood) and then collapsed it with pliers. Then cleaned up anything that was left with chisel and files. Of course if its lacquered in you'll want to score the edges of the nut so as not to chip a bunch of lacquer off.

Once that's clean I take my bone blank and hold it against the end of the fret board and trace the profile of the end of the fret board against the nut blank. Then I rough cut the nut width proud of my pencil markings to give me my rough shape.

Then I want to get the height close to where I want it, for this I have a pencil I've sanded half way through that I lay flat on the frets and use to trace the height of the frets onto the bone blank. That gives me a rough idea of how deep the slots can go, also a sense of the radius of the fret board. I like the top of the nut to mirror the fretboard radius. My pencil is imperfect but I know that I can file my slots down to the pencil line before I have to be careful about going too low.

Before cutting the slots I'll usually try and bring the nut blank down to about a 1/16" above my pencil line.

Then I plot my nut slots, and start cutting them just low enough to hold the strings. At this point I check my string spacing and make sure I like it. If its good I cut the slots down to just kiss my pencil line. At this point I'll still have to drop the slots to get good action.

If it looks like the strings won't be too buried in the slots when the action is good I'll clean up the ends and top of the nut, as I said I like the radius of the nut to match the fret board, I also like it to fall away from the fret board and I want my corners and exposed edges rounded over, then I polish it up.

I'll glue it in place with just a dab (a small one) of tite-bond (same as a fender style nut for me.)

As Freeman mentions, the spacing of the outside E slots is important, and probably if you've been compelled to correct a bunch of things already on this guitar chances are the string spacing isn't ideal and worth considering doing from scratch.

Here's a toot with a link at the bottom of my post that I put together a long time ago and shared here.

Nut making is a bit of an art and not easy to do well. At the Galloup School of Lutherie students have been told that it may take 100 nuts to get it right and be capable of making a really nice nut. I didn't go there but my business partner used to teach there.

To summarize some of the goals that we commercial types who charge for our services want to see in a nut.

1). It eloquently fits and blends into the instrument following all existing lines and curves, angles, etc.

2). Minimalistic in mass and only big enough to get the job done.

3). The ends fit perfectly with no ledge that can be felt by the player.

4). Important and often overlooked. Gapless where it mates to the fret board end AND in the channel in the neck where it sits. If an angled back headstock the angle must match precisely.

5). I make my nuts so that they kind of sort of "snap" into place on g*bson and Martin style head stocks. Nonetheless I use one drop, only one drop Vasili (out of context reference to Hunt for Red October) of medium CA/super glue.

6). We only use one drop because a properly fit nut barely needs any glue AND we want the nut to be serviceable and removable in the future.

7). I like unbleached bone better than all other materials. It's very hard and dense, it looks great polished and is not glaring white like Joe Namath's shoes and unbleached tends to be a bit denser in our experience. Other materials such as ivory are not only not legal to use in some circumstances but not as hard and durable as bone. Not a fan of Tusq either and again prefer bone to all others.

8). The nut slots are an art to cut and you can forget about the 1/2 string proud thing that some Luthiers read somewhere and seem to think is gospel, it's not AND it's potentially problematic with heavy hitters who can rip am e, b or g string right out of a shallow slot. My toot shows my string depth in the slots at the depth of the strings and that works great.

9). lots of nuances to be mindful of such as the break angle of the nut on a g*bson style head stock does well at about half the set back angle of the head stock. The nut slots should be cut flat at that proper angle and not have a hump in the middle of the slot which effectively reduces the break angle at the face of the nut and can result in a sitar sound like that Ravi Cankersore guy. What a talent his daughter is, eh.

10). We don't like needle or triangular files for nut slots and recommend that folks purchase proper gauged nut files. A nut slots should be rounded at it's bottom not V-shaped and pinching the string.

11). Nut slot depth over the frets is an art too and you will see folks like me say this here over and over and over and over again through the years and I'll continue to say it until such time as the small builder guitars AND f*ctory guitars that pass though our shops have nut slots that are are at least in the ball park of being well cut for a freakin change....

12). Files are your friend. Nut making is relaxing to me except I always have my eye on the clock in my efforts to produce. Enjoy the journey.

13). Bone will polish beautifully and you can search on "nut buffer" too and maybe it's in my toot, don't remember it's been a while. Micro mesh pads polish bone beautifully too if you have all day and time is not money to you as it is to me.

14). You will also learn that nut making is not about specific measurements or specs but how the thing blends into the specific instrument. With this said any and all commercial nuts are BS and we won't even install one for our best clients if they already bought it and bring it to us. It takes as much time to install a commercial nut and have it fit perfectly (if that's even possible with some of these POS... out here...) as it does to make one properly from scratch.

15). Your first start to finish including a final set-up on the instrument you can shoot for about two hours in time for the ETA. As you make more and it takes MUCH more to get the hang of this they come faster. I can do a nice nut with a full set-up in just over an hour now.

16). When I was a builder only I only got to make a nut or do fret work when I completed another stinkin guitar. Even at 12 - 24 guitars a year you can see that getting experience making nuts takes a very long time unless you are a repair professional who does it every week or so.

Good luck, hope something here helps, stay safe in these terrible times.

https://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=46829&hilit=making+a+nut

Thanks for the awesome replies. I have read through them appreciate the tips.

I purchased some bulk bone blanks expecting that I’d screw up a few and they just arrived today. I removed the old nut using the described advice. I protected the fretboard with a cloth and used a wood block to pop the old one out.

I was worried about damaging the finish because I’ve seen that before, but the razor blade around the nut edge seemed to have eliminated that issue.

I took the old nut and with a pencil marked the blank with the approximate profile I wanted and trimmed the blank reasonably close to that on my bandsaw and then used the belt sander to sand it to thickness. I probably got it ever so slightly too thin. I’m a perfectionist so I’ll just make another because I have 9 more blanks.

I’ll post some photos.

Don't bother with the bandsaw unless they are really big blanks. Just hit them on the sander.

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

Last piece of advice - approach your final slot depth slowly. You can always make them deeper, you can't make them shallower (well, you can fill them with CA but I don't). And the nut is just one part of a perfect setup - frets, relief, action...... Good luck.

Ok I flubbed my first attempt but will make a second one this weekend and will post pictures

The blanks are quite large so I’ll use the bandsaw for sure!


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Ok finally getting to it again. I ended up tuning a Tusq but for the guitar in the meantime so I didn’t try to rush the bone blank version.

Started with the huge blank, shown next to the original plastic nut. Using a big coarse Nicholson file to flatten the back of the bone blank since it’s out of the box pretty oddly shaped. No two edges are parallel or perpendicular so I used pencil and marked the back and then filed gently until it was smooth as a babies bottom and flat as I could get it.

Next I picked the side that was closest to being perpendicular and decided it was the bottom. I carefully filed it until it was perpendicular.

Checked it periodically along the bottom in a few places with my square until it looked reasonable.

Marked the back and bottom so I can tell which is which. Then used the old nut to mark off which bulk areas to saw or sand off with the power tools. I’ll trim it tomorrow.

Any tips or suggestion on what’s done so far or what’s coming next is appreciated.

If you mark your new nut over on the side, you'll have more material left for another project....

You have a disc sander or belt sander? If not, continue doing it old school with a file.

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

I don’t think I could get 2 out of this one if that’s what you mean. But I’ll move it to the edge just in case.

I have a belt sander for heavy lifting but I flubbed the first one because it was hard to keep even pressure on the part and it removed material quickly and I ended up with the nut being uneven thickness. The file is a lot easier to control once I get it close.

I use a BABS (big arse belt sander) with 80 grit on a 6 X 48 belt. I keep my calipers in my pocket and check often. When I get to within a couple thou of where I want to be I move to a surface plate with 120 and 220 grit on it to sneak up on final dimensions and also get the 80 grit scratches out of it.

Much less aggressive files are my preference for shaping and tuning the final nut. I use a OOO half round file that is heavily worn making it even less aggressive for final shaping and breaking hard edges. I use an aggressive file for taking the nut top down though.

After the files I hit the nut surfaces that will not be in contact with the guitar with 320 and then go to our nut buffer. After buffing my nut it's all shiny and scratchless and may even resemble plastic if done well. I have a now friend who is a master jeweler who insisted that the nut I made for his g*bson was not bone but plastic because of the shiny appearance. Further inspection under a loop and he apologized and became a friend.

Part of how I make a nut is to also cut the slots and do it all on the guitar including filing down the excess nut height filing right to the strings and sacrificing a set for nut making. I usually reserve the old strings that came in on the client guitar for the sacrificial strings so that ours are brand new when the client picks-up the thing.

When cutting nut slots while making the nut I always leave them a few thou high in this stage so that I can do final height during final set-up.

The nut ends should be flush with the neck and headstock contours and not noticeable with the hand of the player. Corners should be rounded, lines should flow with the lines of the guitar and excess material can look chunky and unprofessional so file or sand that crap away.

I make my nuts so that they kind of snap into place and glue would not even be necessary but we use one single drop, just one drop of medium, quality CA on the fret board face to secure the nut. Why use any glue at all if it fits in a snap tight manner? Because surely the client will let the instrument dry out in time and the wood will shrink and expand as wood does.

FYI in our experience we are not fans of Tusq and prefer unbleached bone from free ranging cattle over all other materials. We won't touch ivory and have even banned a client for insisting that since it's his money he should be able to tell us what laws to break regarding ivory. It's believed that unbleached bone is about 10% harder or so than bleached bone so we like the unbleached variety. I also like the way bone can amber in time just like the rest of the guitar.

A very well made bone nut is a beautiful thing and for a hobbyist who has not made many nuts a couple of hours to make one well is not excessive at all. I take a little over a hour these days which is still a bit slow in my opinion. My business partner can beat me by 15 minutes or so on a good day. dang whippersnappers......

My plan was, after using the bandsaw to cut off some of the bulk, to use the coarse file a little more but then as you all have pointed out, to switch to a finer file and then to paper. I have some needle files and slot files although I’m missing two of the correct width slot files and a small vice, which should arrive tomorrow. So I hope to be ready to slot it by tomorrow evening.

On the Tusq nut, I heeded your remarks and worked hard to make the width as perfect as I could get it so it neither felt like the edges were protruding or recessed. I did go for the “snap into place” fit on the thickness and got pretty close except I didn’t chisel out the old glue first so it wasn’t seeming to pop in quite right and then when I realized why and removed the glue the nut was ever so slightly thin. I felt this was ok because it was the temporary Tusq one.

I’ll post more tonight if possible. My wife is sending me on some errands so you never know what might happen to me between now and midnight

Keith you're doing great and it's great to see someone enjoying themselves with this stuff as you are.

Yeah you brought up an important point. The channel that the original nut was removed from should be trued up, old glue removed and the end of the fret board and bottom of the nut channel should be checked for straightness. For the channel bottom I use the side of my engineer's scale the 6" pocket/geek ruler and see if it rocks on the bottom of the nut channel. If there is rock I hollow out the channel bottom until the nut ends will both sit flush with the wood. Same is true of the fret board end you want it flat and straight and vertical too. A small, Sharp chisel will clean out old glue (now you can see why only one drop....) and square things up.

Ok I worked on the partially bleached white nut some more but had some issues with it when it got close to the correct thickness. Not sure if the nut was a bum but or if it’s because it’s partially bleached or something I was doing, but as I filed it down it seemed like there were some big inconsistencies in the density and color and I was having a heck of a time getting it flat and the bottom square. It ended up a tad thin and I decided to start over

I have some black dyed bone as well and tried this with a slightly different approach. Since getting the sides parallel and the right thickness was the biggest challenge before I started there and then clamped it and got the bottom flat and square to the sides.

Oh my god it’s perfect!! I’m quite sure it would stay in place with no glue so let’s hope I don’t screw it up when contouring and slotting

Coarse cut to worth, then fine tuned with a file until the sides were flush and smooth with the edges of the guitar. The binding tapers in a bit so I tapered the nut a bit to match it. Tomorrow I’ll round the edges, contour the back, and smooth it all out, provided I don’t destroy it between now and then

Not sure if you can see the taper from the camera angle but it’s there I promise.

Keith could you please post some pics? Just kidding....

So it looks like you are getting the hang of fitting the bone blank into the nut channel on the neck. Be sure to clean up the nut channel too of any copious glue residue from the last nut and to square it up too.

Regarding if bleached bone has anything to do with why the bone you have had inconsistencies and voids in it, no. Bleaching will only slightly soften the material but it won't change how much material you have and and where. The reason we suggest "quality" bone is that there is an hour's investment in making a nut for a pro and we hit the roof when we are near finished and there is all of a sudden a hidden void that opens up with polishing or sanding. You should hear me swear then......

One of the primary reasons why new nuts don't fit very well and sticklers for detail will point that out to you and others is that the nut channel was not cleaned up first.

This involves or can involve a sharp chisel for the fret board end, for the nut channel bottom and to square the intersection with the head plate (if any) so that the channel's walls and bottom are square or uniform for set-backs head stocks. I use files too specially fitted for this task and be very sure to keep the file square and not roll it creating humps.

It's very common to have a hump in the channel bottom so I chisel it to slightly hollow so that the nut ends sit absolutely flush at the ends where we can see the finished product when all is said and done.

Another thing to be on the look out for is the fret board end they are often not flat or square and that will result in gap that's visible. Be sure not to be aggressive squaring up the fret board end, we don't want to shorten it but just clean it up and square it up.

After all the nut channel housekeeping is done, old glue removed etc. that's when we fit the nut blank for having it be perfectly seated on both ends, in respect to the fret board end and fill the space on the back of the nut where it tucks into the head plate.

I tend to stop sanding on my 80 grit BABS (big arse best sander) (by the way our's was Dan Earlywine's Dad's back in the day) when I get the thickness close and then go to sanding by hand with 220 on a surface plate for the final "snap" fit and to get rid of scratches. Once I establish the nut face and it's true, flat, scratchless and fits the fretboard end perfectly I write with my pencil the letter "f" on it for face. This way I never touch that surface again or my snap fit in the channel is gone.

The back side once it fits well leave that alone too in terms of sanding and I speak of the part of the back of the nut that comes into contact with the head plate. Above that where it's visible please do remove all scratches and shine it up if you wish to do pro quality work.

Someone should have also suggested to you that you find a nice, well made Luthier nut to emulate and copy and not what comes on g*bson's. I'm not a fan of the shape of g*bson nuts and one of the reasons is the nut slots are very short.... making them very, very easy to over file.

Did you look at my tutorial about how we do this and how we sacrifice a set of old strings to get the nut height correct?

You're doing great pat yourself on the back.