Acoustic Guitar Construction

I think a 'zero glide' nut will function as a zero fret only as long as it holds the strings a fret's height off the fingerboard. And I can't in my limited experience see how the zero glide fret can be levelled with the other frets as part of the fingerboard setup. Am I missing something?

It works great, Pete, and is easier in fact than the standard approach. I make my own 'zero-glide nut' with a method I've developed but I'm not saying one type of nut or the other is 'better' - it's not that big a deal. That being said, the zero-fret approach makes a lot of sense to me.

The whole idea behind the zero nut desgn is that the slot bottom height off the finger board can be adjusted

Here's a few pix of my 'zero-glide' process. Works surprisingly well.

First I use a poly cutting board from WMart - it is 3/16" thick, which is the measurement I want for my nuts and saddles. I just pop a nut into the slot in the board, and sand away until it is flush - done.

I then put the nut into the nut slot, and use a sharpened dowel's point, which I've made to be flush with the bottom of the dowel, blackened with a Magic Marker to ink the point, then draw 2 lines on the nut - a line like we would draw with the half-pencil, on the same plane as the frets, and then a line just at the fb end. I want to cut a slot that takes out the lines and the material between them, just deep enough to fit 1/2 of the fret (no tang). That is done on the Dremel, and I use a little homemade fence with the Fret press caul for the fingerboard radius (16") clamped under it to use as a template. Once it is set up, it's a snap to route out the ledge for that part of the fret.

The other part of the fret lies on the fb, of course, plus I do two things: first I use the Fret Barber to remove all the barbs and part of the tang, to get it nice and thin; then I remove a sliver of the fb, just the size of the tang. Then I temporarily place the nut, slide the fret onto the nut 'ledge' and the tang into its tiny recess and the rest of the fret onto the fb and, with always a little tweaking, that part is done.

Now I have to shape the nut and cut the string guides, which is a cinch for zero-fret nuts, polish it up and done.