homemade nut

daveman50 · #1 03-22-2008, 09:08 PM

Necessity is the mother of invention. The expensive, luthier-carved bone nut on my old Ricky started acting weird -- the A string was popping out (towards the E string). Mr. fancy-pants luthier hadn't carved the slot deep enough to handle the string angle back to the tuner -- or, put another way, he had taken too much "off the top" of the nut. Desperation set in as I had to have that bass ready for a gig.... So I improvised. I perceived that a white plastic kitchen cutting board (polyethylene) was close to the right depth (1/4") to turn into a nut. With the judicious use of a small pull saw to cut up the plastic board; a flat file to shape it; a little triangular file to start the slots; an old set of roundwound strings to cut the slots; a small vise to hold the nut for slotting; and a couple of different types of sandpaper to flatten the bottom and front, I was ready to go after about 2 hours of work. I used the bone nut to pattern the string spacing, the overall shape and appearance. I made it a little high and deep to start, and sandpapered it down to a good fit. The end product works perfectly well and sounds fine. 2 pics are attached: (1) the bone nut and the plastic nut side by side (the plastic nut is the white one, duh) and (2) the nut in place. Fun project!

crazyguy832 · #2 03-22-2008, 10:13 PM

Hmmm... that's pretty cool. I may steal this here idea to replace a nut on an old no-name.

Tenma4 · #3 03-22-2008, 10:45 PM

Looks good to me. Any reason a person couldn't use steel? I've got one half way completed I did with my dremel tool and a piece of square stock steel... I'll finish that up along with the rest of the instrument eventually. A rotary tools makes quick work of things like this.

mortar · #4 03-22-2008, 10:58 PM

At the Home depot they have drawers full of Corian samples for the taking that I pick up on occasion for nuts. Try not to advantage of them though.

Easy to work but I prefer real bone

daveman50 · #5 03-23-2008, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mortar

At the Home depot they have drawers full of Corian samples for the taking that I pick up on occasion for nuts. Try not to advantage of them though.

Easy to work but I prefer real bone

Good idea about Home Depot -- I tried that, but couldn't find the Corian samples.

I like bone, too, but I decided not to dig through the trash to find the remains of that t-bone steak I had the other night.

Seriously, I wasn't able to track down a nut blank that was large enough, in the time I had to do it -- this bass required a deep nut.

mortar · #6 03-23-2008, 07:49 AM

At my home depot they keep them in drawers by the counter top stuff.

Pet stores carry bone chew toys that can be made into nuts.

I'm sure the cutting board was the perfect solution.

mortar · #7 03-23-2008, 08:14 AM

Corian samples that I've made a few nuts off of.

PilbaraBass · #8 03-23-2008, 10:55 PM

I had to do something very similar less than 2 weeks ago when the cheap plastic nut on my Yamaha RBX170 snapped at the E-string while restringing...

I had a little piece of grey PVC laying around...and like you in < 2 hours, with some hand tools and a little patience have a perfectly-functional homemade nut.

I prefer corian, and keep my eye out for the stuff (brass too), but haven't been able to trip over any as of late.

daveman50 · #9 03-31-2008, 06:40 PM

Live and learn. Played out with the bass again and the homemade nut failed. The D string slot was not tall enough and the string popped out and would not stay in. I must have been playing very hard. There is quite a bit of lateral tension on the A and D strings on this bass. Thankfully I had a backup bass.

Aside from my bad nut cutting technique, I think the material I touted (poly cutting board) may not be hard enough. Or it could be just a problem with the the slot depth.

Anyway, I followed Mortar's advice (thanks) and tracked down the Corian samples at Home Depot. I now have a homemade Corian nut (with taller slots...). Hope this one works. It was a lot faster to make the nut the 2d time around.

It's very cool to grab those FREE Corian samples. I thought about getting some wacky color but chickened out and went with "Bone."

PilbaraBass · #10 03-31-2008, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daveman50

Live and learn. Played out with the bass again and the homemade nut failed. The D string slot was not tall enough and the string popped out and would not stay in. I must have been playing very hard. There is quite a bit of lateral tension on the A and D strings on this bass. Thankfully I had a backup bass.

Aside from my bad nut cutting technique, I think the material I touted (poly cutting board) may not be hard enough. Or it could be just a problem with the the slot depth.

Anyway, I followed Mortar's advice (thanks) and tracked down the Corian samples at Home Depot. I now have a homemade Corian nut (with taller slots...). Hope this one works. It was a lot faster to make the nut the 2d time around.

It's very cool to grab those FREE Corian samples. I thought about getting some wacky color but chickened out and went with "Bone."

Most likely, your slot was not deep enough…

Although the poly is a bit soft and the shape of the slot can distort a bit…

The slots in my PVC nut are plenty deep and I’ve had no trouble with the bass since I repaired it...although, I would like a corian nut, as well...I've worked with corian before and it is a breeze to shape accurately and neatly.

daveman50 · #11 03-31-2008, 06:57 PM

Yes, my problem with my first nut was that, while the bottom of the slot was at the right height, I took too much off the top and there wasn't enough material holding the string in. (Just like the bone nut I started out with - but on a different string.) Learning by doing.