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Now I can let go of the free end and wind the string up:

You only need to have about half a turn of string wound on the roller to do the job, but I prefer one full turn.

Some people like to wind up a bit more, and that's just a matter of personal taste, as long as there's room for the windings. Big wads of bunched up windings can scar the peghead and be hard to tune, let alone remove, when it's time to restring

Once the string becomes tight, and the end comes around to a convenient place, I'll snip off the free end:


And tune up:

Notice I've made the winding proceed toward the outside of the peghead. This is to allow clearance for the next string, and to have the string draw smoothly as possible across the nut.

Here's the finished product:

Notice how all the strings are positioned. The outside ones go almost straight across the nut, and the innermost ones are placed so that they just miss scratching the inner edges of the slots yet draw reasonably straight across the nut.

This Martin guitar has nice wide slots and is easy to string. You really have your work cut out for you when you restring a National, Dobro or any of the older guitars with really narrow slots!

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