Norbertocaster, part 9: frets and the nut
norbertocaster (build 1)
Started: July 15, 2025 • Ended: September 13, 2025
Cutting the nut and fretting the fretboard
Here comes the part I really hate now: cutting the slot for the nut. I made plenty of mistakes here, including taking off too much wood (thankfully on the headstock side, so I’ll be able to fix it later somehow). The task itself is simple — cut a slot that matches the size of your nut — but in practice it was super frustrating. I was so annoyed I didn’t even take photos of the process.
After that, I finally got to switch from woodwork to something different: fretting the fretboard! There are a few ways to do this. If you’ve got a hand press, that’s probably the most sensible choice (in hindsight). Another option is to use a rubber hammer. I didn’t have a press, so the hammer it was.
For trimming the excess fret wire, you can buy dedicated tools… but honestly, a cheap nail cutter works just fine. I also added a tiny bit of wood glue in each slot to make sure the frets stayed in place.
Using a dedicated tool to rasp the side edges of the frets, I trimmed them to match the fretboard width. Then I decided to go ahead and finish the frets — big mistake! I grabbed a metal rasp to smooth the sides and ended up chipping the fretboard in a few spots (some of which I’ll have to fix later). Looking back, it was a really bad call — I should have waited until the neck was attached to the body and the fretboard was properly secured. Definitely one of the lessons learned.
Short story about Norbertocaster
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I wanted to build a Telecaster‑style guitar because it’s one of the easiest and least complicated guitar shapes. I wanted to keep this project as close to a Telecaster as possible.
At some point, I realized I wanted to make the shape more comfortable than a regular Telecaster by adding an arm cut and a belly cut (and maybe a few others) to the body. That’s when I decided to call the project the Norbertocaster.
End of story.