Nut Handle
© Frank Ford, 2/2/99; Photos by FF, 2/1/99
Hey, take a look at this cool little item Bob Gleason sent me! He's the creator of Pegasus Guitars and Ukuleles in Hilo, Hawaii.
So, it's really an incredibly simple little device. Just a block of ebony with double sticky tape on one edge, and abalone on the other:
The double sticky carpet tape is perfect for holding nut and saddle blanks:
It's really easy to get a grip on a nut or saddle blank with this handle.
It makes light work of flattening the blank on a sheet of silicon carbide paper clipped to my marble slab:
By the way, here's a nifty trick you can do with your big belt sander:
Any time you need a coarse flat sanding surface, you can simply rub the item in question right on the sanding platen without turning the machine on. It's no big deal, just a handy source of a flat sanding surface when you need one quickly.
Here's Bob's little tool in action as a safety device. It works great to hold a nut blank against my 1"x42" belt sander:
I can even use my buffer to polish the nut without taking it off the little handle:
Sometimes it's the little simple thing that really works!
Bob tells me that it isn't strictly necessary to make the block of ebony. Any hardwood will do. The abalone decoration makes it an official Pegasus tool, though, and helps ensure that it won't be chucked in the trash by accident!
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