The nut

The nut is the final missing piece. It supports the strings at the neck. I can use the left over piece from the saddle to make the nut. I first angled the side towards the pegbox appropriately to follow the angle of the pegbox. After that I filed the top surface of the nut to follow the curvature of the fingerboard, leaving ~2 mm proud. Once that was done I could shape the ends. The top still needs to be shaped nicely so that the strings can gracefully turn from the fingerboard into the pegbox.

I cannot quite finish the nut now. I had left the fingerboard  a little long and need to finish the end of the fingerboard properly before I can really match the nut. That probably needs to wait until after varnishing since to finish the fingerboard I need to take it off the neck which I plan to do for the varnishing anyways.