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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Coverplates, nuts and strings

I feel it would be verging on cruelty to say we’re getting close to the finish line or something to that effect. Let’s just see where we end up at the bottom of this post. 

I have a template for marking the locations for the screw holes. This template is one of my finest achievements, I vividly remember the wonderful day when both halves of my brain lined up and fired the idea behind it. 



With the cone in the well and a 3 mm drill bit at the 12th fret I dial in the height of the saddle. The biscuit is fastened to the cone with a screw from underneath. 

The last batch of cones, coverplates, biscuits and saddles came from this great shop in England. I noticed today that they had included all screws, and those for the coverplate were much neater than the ones I used before. Yay! The shop was Drummond & Hammett (Kirk, obvs).



With the height sort of correct I mark for the string notches with my four point divider, made by Ken Timms. Ken is a master craftsman. 



Screwing down the coverplate I managed to capture an eerie presence on camera! I’ll give any ghost hunter a run for their money. 



For the nut I use bone. I ordered a bunch of guitar saddle blanks on ebay, but also got a bunch of ready made saddles in the package. Never mind, I use a quarter of each. In the pic the legendary half pencil gives me the depth of the nut slots, as it rides atop the frets. 



Bye bye, three quarters of a free bone saddle. You can see I saw to a line above what the half pencil gave me. 



Et voilà..! A nut. I angle the slots to give the impression I know what I’m doing. 



Then I brought the ukes, the fishing line, the glass beads and a rusty nail cutter upstairs because it is chilly [and cluttered] in the workshop. 

Are we getting close to the finish line yet?



Hell yes we are! A few tweaks in the nut slots and saddle notches and they should be good to go. 

I told the customers that I never expect payment before I string them up and see if they work. That will take me a day or two but I am optimistic. Even about that strange beast, the tenor reso. 




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