Easiest way to make a flat, half-pencil for marking nut heights?

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Sea Devil

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I like the idea and have lots of pencils. I have a ton of vintage drafting tools as well. However, I usually mark a nut by determining the fret height with feeler gauges and a fret rocker, then using a rubber band to hold the stacked feeler gauges tight to the radius of the fretboard right against the nut. I mark that line with a soft sharp lead.

At that point, I may also make a mark .008" higher on the treble side and .014" higher on the bass side. I like my nut slots low.
 

Sea Devil

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BTW, I like to live dangerously, so I do almost all of my nut-shaping with a cut-off wheel in a hand drill, curves and corners included. It smells awful but goes very quickly.

Nut slots are cut to depth first with the aid of a Stew-Mac string spacing ruler. Then I bring the top down to the final height with the cut-off wheel, sand and polish it, and start finessing the slots with gauged files, sometimes with a magnifying glass. The pencil can come back into play here -- not for lubrication, but to show irregularities in the slots. You want your files to glide through with no dark spots, no matter how small. A lot of my guitars have Bigsbys, so I expend a lot of effort on this stage, making that slot shine like Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

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Sea Devil

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Boreas, I see you liked the above post even without the Bernini. I think it adds a lot; now everyone who reads that post will think of it when working on nut slots!
 

nielDa

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I'm using feeler gauges to match the fret height, like other people here, but instead of flattening pencils I'm wondering if a rectangular graphite stick or pastel crayon from an art supply store, beveled down to a chisel point, would make things easier. (I haven't tried this, just a thought as I read through this thread.)
 

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telemnemonics

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No need to expose the whole length of the lead, I use a block plane and angle the shaving to get the point at the correct height.
As the point wears it must be realigned but it wears VERY slowly and one can last for years with minor adjustments.
I've never removed the wood the whole length, simply no need to do that.
 

Freeman Keller

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Not only do I make the pencil on the little belt sander, I do the rough shaping of the nut too

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Also good for trimming your finger nails. I can always tell when I'm working with bone, it smells like burning hair.
 

Boreas

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Mojotron

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Not only do I make the pencil on the little belt sander, I do the rough shaping of the nut too

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Also good for trimming your finger nails. I can always tell when I'm working with bone, it smells like burning hair.
this ^^

All kidding aside - the 1/2 pencil tool is amazingly good for roughing in nutslots. I make them the same way with a belt sander and have been using them for decades. When roughing in the nut slots I just file down close to the line without touching the line, and the nut is ready for strings at that point.
 
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