Steel Guitar Builder

I posted this on the SGF, in response to someone's question about oversized nut blanks. I thought I'd post it here, just in case any of you had not discovered this source of clean, cheap bone.

If you need an odd sized nut blank, and have a bandsaw, go to the pet store, and look through the dog bones. They have been cleaned and sterilized. You can look at the ends and see how thick it is. Pick one out that will do the job and re-saw it. These bones are often way better quality material than the random selected pieces you get from a nut supplier, and pretty cheap. You will have material for several nuts and saddles left over.

have heard that "deer antlers" make good nuts/bridges...
anyone ever use them.......making plans to build my first
lap steel..........got lots of antlers...deer are plentiful in east tx
thx
bud

I've made a few nuts from antlers. They can work pretty good, as long as you stay away from the pithy parts. You don't get as much material for your trouble as you get with a good sized piece of bone though. The antler nuts I've made had sentimental meaning to the instrument owner, that's why I did it. Antler would not be my first choice otherwise. I also thought that I was close to having a good blank a few times, when close to the end of the process, a flaw would rear it's ugly head and just laugh at me!

I'm an on again/off again butcher by trade, and I used to cut bone pieces for my personal use. I refit many a cheapo guitar with a bone nut in college, and still had some of those blanks up until a few years ago. On the work saw, it was surprisingly easy to cut pieces of bone straight and clean - I really miss those blanks.

Now I have to buy my materials, like everyone else.

I like this idea of the dog bones. I'm going to have to check this out; thanks for the tip.

I have made a couple of nuts from deer horns and am going to try them when I put guitar back together. I cut them and got them as close to shope as I could with belt sander and band saw then turned them down with lathe. We will see.
jim

can bone be used for both nut and bridge piece.
JIM

Yes Jim. You should still try to make some effort to ground the strings if possible however. Possibly through the tail piece???