Recommend me some good nut files and crowning files

I have one of these crown files and it works fine.


I did end up going with the Stewy nut slot files. I'm curious to see the other recommendations.

Good nut files are going to be expensive. I had a set of the ones with the fish on them (if I remember the name, I'll post it) and found they weren't terribly aggressive and weren't my favorite... but, I'm using mine several times a day, often making nuts from blanks, so for a hobbyist doing setups they're likely fine. I'm using the Stew-Mac ones. Yeah, they're expensive. They go on sale from time to time. When they're on sale... they're still expensive. But, better.

For crowning files, the good news is that the difference between cheap ones and nice ones is purely a quality-of-life and/or efficiency thing; one isn't going to result in a better final result than another. I'd stay away from the dog leg style with the changing inserts. Those are hard to control and you can get weird chatter marks that are harder to get out in the polish phase. You can do frets over the body (acoustics, Les Pauls, etc.) with a straight crowning file, it is just more tedious and you have to be a bit more careful. Shield off the top and you'll get the hang of it. You also don't actually need a narrow and wide version. If you do a guitar with narrow frets with a wide file you'll still get a good crown. The polishing phase tends to alter the crown a bit anyway, so the slight difference remaining after will make it negligible to anyone except the person who did the crowning.

That said, I use the fancy offset diamond crowning file from Stew-Mac, but as I mentioned it is a quality-of-life thing so I can do them quickly since it gets near daily use. If you spring for it, get the coarse grit one. The fine grit is (I would presume) intended for production workers who need to do very little crowning after fretting but want to speed up the polishing. I've had the ones that are just a straight file on a wooden handle, and was perfectly happy with them when I used them, they just took more time for the spots over bodies.

This is the set I have, and yes, you need to be careful with them. I do prefer the ergonomics, though. You just need to get your zen on.

RE: the Stewy nut files... I recently bought the nut file backers for my files. Made them a whole lot easier to handle.

www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-and-supplies/tools-by-job/tools-for-nuts-and-saddles/nut-file-backer.html

Thanks guys. I forgot about Philadelphia luthiers as an option. I just recently started doing my own fretwork. It started with getting a couple new guitars that had fret sprout and just why not do more. I’ll keep my eye open for sales and eBay and reverb are great ideas. Now in going to have to get a small toolbox instead of coffee containers and Rubbermaid.’

Ehh, for as little as I do this I just bought a set of 3 Hosco crowning files from Philadelphia Lutherie. The one I currently have is the Stewmac wooden handled with different bits, I've found that one clunky and chattery.