Missing nut, confused on measurement

I'm a newbie and am trying to repair my grandmother's old ukulele. It's missing a nut and seems to measure 33mm where it would be. I've not had much luck finding a 33mm nut. Is that not a common measurement? Any guidance would be appreciated!

I have no idea what brand it is. I don't think it's a particularly high-quality instrument but it has sentimental value.

You can get nuts on Amazon and eBay in different colors, materials, and sizes. In most cases, the nut must be cut to fit - shorter and not so high. I'm sure you will get more detailed answers.

If you tell us the make and model, someone might have specific information.

Jerryc41 said:

You can get nuts on Amazon and eBay in different colors, materials, and sizes. In most cases, the nut must be cut to fit - shorter and not so high. I'm sure you will get more detailed answers.

If you tell us the make and model, someone might have specific information.

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That's helpful! It would explain why most I found are 35mm so you can trim it down to size. There is literally no marking on the instrument so I don't have a clue as to the make and model.

In my experience 33 mm is a little narrow but not unheard of.

Measure the distance between the two outermost strings. See if you can find the string spacing for the nuts you're considering, and determine how close it is to your existing spacing. When making a precut nut narrower, you sometimes run into string spacing issues relative to the edges of the fretboard. Two mm difference should be OK but might be cutting it close. Then again, if you can't find the string spacing info on nuts listed for sale, they're usually very cheap so you can try just buying a few to see how they measure up in person.

As a fallback plan you can always cut and slot a nut from scratch, but that's fiddly specialized work if you're not used to it - slotting a nut correctly takes more skill than just sanding a preslotted nut on the sides until it's the right width.

Here is a nut from Amazon. Real bone and 35mm wide. To get it down to 33, just evenly sand on both ends taking off a millimeter.



I think it is interesting to note that one time I needed an emergency nut and slipped a cheapy Chinese plastic nut in until I could make a proper bone nut. Guess what? The uke sounded exactly the same whether the nut was bone or plastic which goes to show it don't make no difference.

I’ve made several nuts from bone blanks and I’ve even made one from a small piece of hard wood. It isn’t hard to do but it’s not easy and it takes (me) a long time. None of my Ukes are that good, all bar one are laminate, so my experiences might differ from other people with much better instruments. Does nut material matter? Well it has for me so I try to avoid even the better hard plastic nuts, but YMMV.

33mm wide at the over the tuner end of the fret board seems like an unusually narrow neck to me. As others have said buy a pre-made nut and (equally) file a little off each end to bring it down to the size that you want. Some nuts have wider spaced string slots than others, the OP might like to check out how that impacts on his instrument. Perhaps that’s too much detail, the important thing is to make a start; fit what you can and then see what might need to be done from there. Of course, OP, once the nut is fitted, don’t forget that the Uke will need to be ‘set-up’ too.

Edit. I used hand tools only, worked slowly and encountered no particular hazard issues - perhaps I was either lucky or managed them automatically. Stuff happens and whatever you do always consider H&S issues, and especially so when using power tools.

When working with bone ensure adequate ventilation and wear a mask.