[sdiy] DIY knobs

[Stephen Harrison]

I DIY my own knobs. It's quite easy and can be done with just a lathe, although
owning a drill press makes it faster. If you are in the US or Canada you can
easily obtain an import 7x minilathe which is good for many hobbies (i actually
bought my lathe to make knobs for SDIY, and soon found out how many more uses it
has) 

to make knobs (from 6061 aluminum), i needed the following tools (aside from the
lathe):

hacksaw
cutting tools that can be used for turning and facing
boring bar 
drill chuck and arbor for the lathe
set of center drills
standard drill bits that you might use (tap drill for #8-32 machine screw, a
drill that is the size of your pot shaft)
#8-32 tap (or a metric size if you know where to get metric set screws) and tap
wrench

check out:

http://www.mini-lathe.com
http://www.littlemachineshop.com

lots of good info to be had.

http://www3.telus.net/~sh9787/AVR-Synth/Panel%20Layout.jpg

shows some DIY knobs while laying out my AVR synth panel.

regards

stephen

> What you need to do is invest in a small lathe...You can get a fairly nice 
> one for only a few hundred dollars.
> 
> At 05:36 AM 2/23/2006 +0100, Karl Ekdahl wrote:
> >Hi all, i've been trying for the last couple of days
> >to make my own DIY knobs from a piece of wooden shaft.
> >It seems extremely hard to me to be able to (without a
> >drill stand) drill the holes straight enough to make
> >the "knob" not be visibly skewed. Does anyone have any
> >tips?
> >
> >I was thinking of maybe use latex if wood isn't
> >working. Any good tips on easy-to-come-by industrial
> >latex or equivalent(s) that will work with a
> >clay/plaster mold?
> >
> >Karl
> 
>          -Jim
> ***************************************************************
> http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
> 
>