this question may be my undoing

fleadermaus

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I got a new uke the other day. One of the nut slots is too narrow for the fat Aquila strings it came with. When I'm tuning, the string sticks in the groove and I need to lift it out with my fingers to get the string to settle on a pitch.

I have no tools for widening the slot. I don't want to shell out money for a set of nut files, nor do I want to wait for a set to arrive in the mail. Can I fix this issue with stuff I can find cheaply in a normal hardware store? Any tips for doing so?
 
Try one of these, just work carefully!
 
Thanks, I've never seen one of those tools before. I'll check around for one.

Is there a special trick to this kind of work, or is it some straightforward sawing back and forth?
 
Those are torch tip cleaners. They're not really saws or files but wires that have ridges on them. They're less than ten bucks a set but don't work all that well. Don't make a big deal of this; simply pick up a sheet of 220 sandpaper, cut a small square, fold it and widen the nut slot by sanding lightly back and forth WITHOUT making the slot deeper. It will likely only take a few strokes to fix it. If you do cut too deeply all is not lost. The tiniest drop of CA glue will partially fill the slot and You'll start over.
Good luck.
 
CA glue? Why ii's California glue of course.
Sorry, I thought I was in the luthiers corner of the room. CA glue is formally know as cyanoacrylate glue and more casually known simply as super glue.
 
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Thanks. I will try the sandpaper.

Question: will it work on any nut material--plastic, bone, wood, etc?
 
The sandpaper worked. It needs a few more swipes as the string is still a tiny bit sticky, but already there's a huge improvement. Thanks!
 
You can usually buy a set of "hobby" files in craft/hobby stores or hardware stores. These are small files perfect for this sort of work. I was looking at two sets over the weekend (in the local Canadian Tire store). One was a fine set of European-made small files for $18, the other a whole package of various files, including many larger files and rasps, for $20. They're cheaper Chinese-made files, but for this sort of work the small ones are probably fine.

You may want to consider files with a small handle, because the're easier to use along fret edges than those with fatter handles. A nail file may work, but many nail files have two different sides and one will grind the material away much faster than the other, so you need to be careful.
 
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