Homemade luthiery tools

[fender3x]

Had to cut a nut from scratch and, for once, could not just copy the old string spacing. But then I found this little gem:

Compensated String Spacing Layout Tool

You can also get it here:

CSSLT

Not sure of the name of the author of this. I *think* it's someone with the handle "Jaydawg" on TDPRI. It's a shame not to be able to credit the author for his useful PDF.

[Simon Barden]

Had to cut a nut from scratch and, for once, could not just copy the old string spacing. But then I found this little gem:

Compensated String Spacing Layout Tool

You can also get it here:

CSSLT

Not sure of the name of the author of this. I *think* it's someone with the handle "Jaydawg" on TDPRI. It's a shame not to be able to credit the author for his useful PDF.

Note that it's probably not ideal for a nylon strung guitar, where the string diameters are all pretty similar. On a steel-strung guitar, you want the string spacing between the edges of the strings to be constant, so the spacings increase as the string diameter increases. With nylon strings, there is much less of a difference between the string diameters e.g. 0.028" to 0.045", as opposed to say .012" to 0.052".

The nylon strings also get bigger then decrease again, whilst steel string sets always increase.

0.028, 0.032, 0.040, 0.031, 0.037 and 0.045
0.012, 0.016, 0.024, 0.032, 0.042 and 0.053

With a classical/nylon strung guitar, you may be better off using a calculator like on this page, where you can type in your string diameters and get it just right. https://www.guitarrasjaen.com/Equisp...alculator.html

For a common 1st to 6th string spacing of 1.457"/37mm (classical nuts have a wider spacing but I used the same spacing for a direct comparison), the difference in spacing between nylon and steel string varies by around 0.25mm; sometimes plus, sometimes minus. It's not a huge difference, and there is always the question of human accuracy when marking and cutting the slots.

But if you look at the actual between string slot centre distances, for the nylon string, they vary by less than 0.28mm, whereas for the steel strings, the distances vary by up to 0.85mm, so given measuring and cutting accuracies, you may well feel that for nylon, equal spacing will suffice.

Note that this string to string distance variance remains constant whatever the nut width is, so the nylon string to string distance variance will be just the same on a 46mm spaced nut as on a 37mm spaced one (as will the steel string variance), although the actual string to string spacing distances will differ.

[fender3x]

Note that it's probably not ideal for a nylon strung guitar, where the string diameters are all pretty similar.

That's true! In addition to the guide you found I also saw this one that calculates from the sides of the nut rather than from E string centers:

https://manchesterguitartech.co.uk/f...ut-calculator/

But you are probably also right that compensating is overkill for a classical.