Harmony Sovereign stripped truss rod nut

[Mark Pollock]

I think the title says it all - I was working on a very nice Sovereign, took out the truss rod nut with my 1/4" driver, lubed it up real good, put it back on, and discovered that the nut is completely stripped out. The rod is fine, and I managed to scavenge another nut from a Regal guitar that has more work waiting on it. I still need to find a nut for the Regal, though. Is there an obvious source for these that I might not know about? Or am I going to be making my own nut?

This is the kind of trouble I get into when I'm on summer vacation. Resetting necks, fixing instruments - six more weeks until I have to go back to teaching.

[Mark Pollock]

Whoops - nevermind - I actually read the article...

http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Luthier/Technique/TrussRods/BrokenR...

Now, I'm wondering if I should dig the washer out and try to clean it too - do those things get rusted in place and cause problems? The neck was at full tension when I removed the nut, and the neck did not move at all when the nut was out. I just put it down to really dense neck wood, but now I'm starting to wonder if the whole thing is just frozen up...