Ok so after much deliberation a bit of guess work and a few tips from fellow members I decided to go ahead and slot my first bone nut. As can been seen from the photos, ive gone in and slotted before shaping, I did this on purpose as I thought this would make it easier to shape once the strings were setup to height. I used the feeler gauge .004 for the 3rd fret to first fret height check, I know some want to take it lower at that point .0035 I think but ive settled on where they are at this point. Intonation is good, no fret buzzing so I think im clear there. I used a varied amount of files and blow pipe cleaners, the gauging is a little hit and miss but my pin file collection took care of getting the slot bottoms round to accept the strings, I angle the files so to try and get the angles to the tuners acceptable as well as keeping an eye on the face of the nut so to get the strings to sit above the frets at the feeler gauge depth. This is my first attempt at slotting and shaping a bone nut, seems to be ok at this point, I will fine tune my process and likely do another.
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