Almost Done With The Lefty Bass -

[mdw3332]

I'm just finishing up with this devil.

So far, I, pretty happy with it, it is for a friend who owns a big machine shop and that got me to thinking. I'm not having a good time cutting a nut for it and was wondering about the advantages / disadvantages of doing a brass nut. I imagine he could whip one out quite easily.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks,

Marty

[Doug 59]

I have a length of flat bar 55mm wide and 6 mm thick. I cut nut size pieces from this,and shape them down to size and shape.

Brass is a soft greasy metal, easy to file and shape, polishes up well with fine wet and dry paper.

I use a standard [24 teeth] hacksaw and files for cutting etc, but I do use Jewellers Files for the final finishing and the string slots.

It's also worth putting 2 small pins on the underside to help with positioning. this is done by drilling 2 mm holes to a depth of 3 mm into the underside, and then inserting 2 mm brass wire into the holes and trimming it off to leave a mm or so as the pins.

In my opinion brass accepts the resonance off the strings better than ivory or bone etc.

I'm into using Silver these days, as it's an element, as opposed to being a alloy, as brass is. It's also a lot more harder / brittle than brass and it's the best conductor of heat and electricity, as far as metals go, even better than gold. I have a feeling that it "conducts" sound waves just as well.

The differences between all the different materials available though, are probably unperceivable to our ears!

[mdw3332]

Doug,

Thanks for the advice. My friend has a big machine shop and works with all kinds of metal so I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.

Marty