My neighbor across the road from me has "twang fever" real bad. He's got 4 of my guitars and 3 of my former amps. Much of my tools and books from luthier school and from my old shop that weren't sold to the man I trained who bought my business. He's got about 9 guitars or more and well over 8 amps total. He gets up at 3AM and plays unplugged every morning. OCD would be a good description.... And is an avid YouTube watcher.
About three weeks ago he got it in his head to build a laptop 6 string guitar from a slab of wood off an old porch rail and scrap cedar. He was doing fine though, and would occasionally call me with some questions on various things that he was attempting to do. Well, yesterday, he finished his lap steel guitar. Its strong with 13 to 58 GHS Boomers and the nut, nearly 3" wide, was cut with "Swiss files" and quite rough. I brought him my new nutfiles and spacing rule. The nut was quite tall and his efforts were quickly removed. Proper spacing marked off. And the nut was cut and finished in 20 minutes with me explaining every step. When done, his newly created instrument was quite playable and sounded really good. I then handed him my files and spacing rule telling him he needed them more than me. He was speechless. Then he said I should keep em. I told him not to worry because if I need to use em, I could always borrow em. He's got promising skills and they're improving. I told him if I got him 20 years ago, he'd have his own shop turning out custom instruments and performing all sorts of repairs with ease.
Oh well, though my hands don't always work as well as they used to, the old man's still got the touch. Always said I can fix 'em a hell-of-a lot better than I can play em. And now my neighbor knows how to properly slot and smooth a nut. Even a big one! Ha!