So I thought I'd post here how I raised the nut on my violin a while back. Maybe someone will even find it useful. Who knows. The problem was that the E string groove was too low and the open string was buzzing against the fingerboard. I have done this on my bass guitar nut as well once and it worked quite well. I used baking soda instead of ebony filings for reinforcement to get the white plastic colour on the bass nut. Glue used is regular thin super glue. The gel kind won't work for this.

Here goes. Click the pictures to enlarge.

First I filed the surface lightly to prep for the glue.

Then masked off the surrounding area. Best to contain the mess if it happens. Care should be taken to match the edge to the fingerboard to come out straight. Otherwise it might slightly alter string length.

Propped the violin up so the are I was working on was mostly level so the glue wouldn't run down anywhere.

Filed some ebony powder on a sheet of paper and put it on the prepped nut area. You want to have quite a generous amount of it since it does collapse a bit when the liquid glue is added. I only noticed later that the powder photo came out blurry

Dropped some super glue on top on it. You should avoid using so much glue that it completely covers the powder. A good amount is when the powder is wet but the texture still visible.

Minutes later I removed the masking tape. There is no strict time window here. Just wait until you feel it has dried enough to start working it. Best to wait longer than to try peeling the tape off too soon.

And another shot with the tape removed.

Now a shot with the glued part filed down to blend in and also the new groove filed in. Basically the finished thing.

You do want to wait for a while longer to tune the instrument once the nut is done. The glue remains softish for a while. I don't remember how long I had it sitting but an hour or some should do.

So that's it. Hope someone finds it interesting. Also I hope the formatting of alternating text and pictures came out ok.