Half Pencil Trick (Pics)

[Hesh1956]

I don't have any idea who originated this idea but I do know that many of my guitar building pals already know this trick and use it too.

It's the half pencil technique that is useful for transferring the height of your frets and the radius of your fret board onto your nuts.... so that you can have some idea how much nut height to remove while making your nut.

If you have not used this technique it works very well and can save you a nut blank or two.

It starts with making a 1/2 pencil, I used my belt sander:





I hooked up the Festool vac to my sander and wore a respirator not wishing to breath graphite and I would suggest that you take appropriate safety/health measures too.

The idea is to use the flat side of the pencil on the tops of your frets to transfer the fret board radius and fret height onto the nut blank. Once you have a line drawn you can remove some of the height of the nut blank, but don't go all the way to the line...., and you will be cutting through less nut material as you slot your nut.



I hope this helps someone.

[Ricardo]

Hesh, Very Simple, Looks like a great way to do this task. I am about to enter this phase of a build, I will be using this technique. Thanks for sharing.

[kiwigeo]

Dont be fooled people. Mister purple pants is so tight he saws his pencils in half to get more mileage out of them.

[Taffy Evans]

Well I think Hesh will never have to buy another pencil, the one I cut in half 15 years or so ago, for this use, is still going strong today.

[Dadovfor]

Now that is clever

[jjh]

I glue a 1/2 pencil to a length of thin aluminium angle and use this to scribe the arc on the saddle and use it as a gauge for setting the action

[woodrat]

I glue a 1/2 pencil to a length of thin aluminium angle and use this to scribe the arc on the saddle and use it as a gauge for setting the action

Hi JJH. Greetings from the Colonies! Would you mind a brief explanation of this technique and maybe a pic or two. I'd like to understand how you use it to gauge the action. That would seem to be a useful technique to know about.
Regards from Down Under

John AKA Woodrat

[Taffy Evans]

Jjh, Hesh, I forgot... I use a similar set up for plotting the string hight at the bridge for cello's and bass's. and another for guitars.

In the photo you can see that there are adjusting screws at each end, one for nut end string hight and the other for string hight over the fingerboard at the bridge end. This plots a string projection to the bridge and is marked with the pencil. I use a similar set up for guitar saddle heights. I treat this as a starting point due to the changes caused due to string tension.

[vandenboom]

The half pencil can also be used to more accurately trace the contour of a body shape that you fancy - that's a guitar body shape of course.
Frank

[WaddyT]

I believe chalk is the preferred method of tracing human bodies!

[Hesh1956]

Yeah and that brown binding tape from Stew-Mac and LMI works very well too...