©1992 - 2008 Richie Dotson. All photographs, graphics and text owned by Richie Dotson. All rights reserved

Website designed, written, photographed and maintained by Richie Dotson

You are visitor Number:

Cutting a Nut Seating slot in a New Construction Banjo Neck

This is a topic that comes up from time to time and while I was building this banjo for Andy Mansfield of The Sun Baked Possum band (don't worry, you will hear of them if you haven't already ... ) I thought I would take the time to photograph the steps that are necessary to install a nut on a newly constructed banjo neck.

The headstock overlay, in this case a nice piece of ebony, was installed and the headstock was shaped, then inlayed and the fingerboard was installed shortly thereafter.  The headstock overlay in a little out of square and installed a with a little overlap so it can be cut back during this, the nut seating process.  Here is how that slot was achieved:

The wooden block is a piece of pine board that made its way into my shop via a rocking chair rebuild for my lovely wife.  I haven't finished that project as of the shooting of this series but I did take full advantage of pine's cheapness (monetarily in this case) and build a handy jig for this purpose.  The angle on the jig is pretty close to 14 degrees and that matched that of the headstock on this banjo.  As you can see from the photos below it is aligned and clamped onto the headstock at the desired distance from the beginning of the fingerboard as the thickness of the banjo nut you want to install.  I like 3/8" and it was at this distance I affixed this jig.

Click on the pictures for a larger view

The mirror I placed behind the work will help to insure that I don't favor the back of the cut and accidentally say my way into the wood of the neck!  I can guess that doing that would result in a very long day.

The idea is to hold the blade of the saw (this is my fret slotting saw, which is simply a dove tail saw with a 0.022" blade) up against the jig to keep it at the correct angle while you are cutting away the excess overlay down to the neck wood.

I don't cut all the way through the wood of the overlay, but leave a tiny hinge of wood so as not to even risk cutting into this beautiful piece of curly maple that took many hours to get to this late stage of construction.  That is where the miniature, razor-sharp dog-leg chisel comes in handy.

After carefully cutting the hinge of wood with an X-Acto knife loaded with a new or newly sharpened blade (of you can't shave with it you need a new one or you need to know how to get them that sharp) and then switch to the chisel.  The glue that holds the overlay onto the peghead most always holds these little bits of wood on.  I cautiously remove the remainder of the overlay material sticking out past the cut.  Be careful not to have your hand on the other side as one slip will add color to that bare maple and to your language.  I've been there!

I also leave a little bit of binding overhang that is cleaned up with a wide, sharp chisel.  The guide for this is the wall of the fingerboard.

All done and ready for the new bone nut to be fitted.