A while back I bought a Delta Grooves neck because, new to guitar building, I wanted to see how nice a neck could be. I finally put this into a nice Tabak box. Humbucker pickups, enclosed tuners, hardtail bridge.
The intonation is so whacked I gotta move the bridge back further. The sustain on this neck is beautiful. The humbucker is warm and gnarly with gain applied. As soon as I get the intonation fixed, I'll put a sound bite up!
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The thing is gorgeous though.
Getting there.
I would bite the bullet and move the bridge back to the guitar edge. Sure there might be two little holes but two pop rivets or a small decorative handle can sit over the bridge and tidy it up.
Edit- closer to the guitar edge, too far back will cause similar problems.
I don't know what products are available where you are Richard, but most epoxy timber fillers can be drilled right beside, or even 1/2 way across an existing hole once set, if you are careful, you could plug your old holes, move the plate back so it JUST covers the old holes and re - drill, a tiny patch of wood glued under the 2 front holes inside the box would almost certainly help to stop your plugs ever coming out. Of course you could do what i said without even plugging the holes, just use a thicker piece of wood inside the box to screw into, as long as you don;t slide the plate back too far and expose the old holes it should be ok
I learned this trick in luthior school.
First take a carpenters pencil and cut it length wise sand it flat on the side you just cut off make sure it's dead flat( sandpaper glued to glass plat works great for this and the sanding of the bottom of the nut).
You now have a tool to set the minimum height for the nut.
To use this tool. First unstring the git place pencil flat on necks fretboard on fret's 1,2,3 scribe line on nut with pencil tool this will give you a " do not go lower than this line".
Now take that measurement from bottom to line and transfer it from top to bottom of the nut. Now you can sand the bottom of the nut with out repeating putting it back on guitar and off till its close. Now that the nut is at the correct height you can address that nut slot you want the take off position to be as close to the fretboard side as possible. You will need to do some fine tuning but this will get you in the ballpark very fast and on your next guitar you will be able to quickly find nut height before shaping the top of the nut and not have this problem.
I might jus have to sand it down using the sandpaper glued to a flat surface?
The box knife did a good job!
I marked the nut, removed it, measured distance from bottom of nut to the line, transposed the measurement, and started sanding the bottom edge. Once I got fairly close, I slipped the nut into place. Intonation is almost correct. The screws on the hardtail are still screwed in as far as possible (springs are totally compressed) though....
Screws on hardtail fully compressed. Sure would be nice if I could back those screws off a bit!
You seem to be winning Richard, but that lack of further travel is going to restrict your chances of intonation a bit, but if you shorten the spring a bit, it looks like you can get another 4-5 mm, and that will get you pretty close i'd think, you might need to shorten the screws a touch as well, i can't tell by the pic how close they are to the strings. An alternative might be to put a nice hardwood spacer behind the bridge, and have your screws come from that after drilling the holes in the bridge upstand large enough for the springs to go through.
I had to do that with the last one of those bridges I used. I had to stick a plastic piece under the height screws on the low string. It buzzed once I got it pulled way back. Those screws are behind their little troughs, and at a steep angle. I used one of those little plastic things that attach tags to clothes.
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