Prometheus wrote:
Since I spend so much time in the car during my daily commute, I was
thinking that I'd like to turn a knob for my stick shift out of a nice
hunk of cherry I've got sitting in the garage. It seems like a fairly
simple project, but I'm wondering just how in the heck I can get the
threads tapped in the knob. I don't want to epoxy it in place, as the
car is new and I want to have the option to replace it again should
that become necessary later. While I'm sure there is a tap with the
proper thread size somewhere, it seems like overkill to buy a really
large and probably fairly uncommon tap for one hole, so I was thinking
of trying to find a nut at the local hardware store that I can epoxy
into the center of the knob, and use that. The only problem is that I
have no idea what size I am looking for.

Does anyone know if those knobs use a single standard thread size, and
if they do, what that size may be? Or, has anyone tried a different
strategy for creating threads inside of a turned piece? I have some
old cans of that "Durham's Rock hard putty" in the basement, and I
wonder if it might be possible to mix something like that up, fill the
hollowed knob about 1/3 full, and then grease the shifter lever with
something to keep it from sticking and use the shifter itself as sort
of a thread mold. Tried doing a google search, but I didn't find much
on this sort of project with the serach strings I tried, so I figured
I'd check in here and see if anyone has done this before, and how it
worked out.

I've done it in the past. Different makes/models use different threads,
but they are normal threads. If you can remove the knob, take it into
the hardware store with you and have them see if they can find a bolt to
match it. That'll tell you what the thread is. It's "probably" metric,
so start there. OTOH, you can always take your nut jar out to the car
and see if any of them fit.

Dave in Fairfax
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