Escape Room Switch  4                                                10-2022

 

Working With Brass Continued

 

Next it was time to drill some holes to mount a mid-level piece. This mid-level piece will be fastened to the U shaped piece but will also allow me to mount a round handle as well.
 

 

 

This piece of brass started out being 1" X 1" X 8" long but I cut it down to 6" in length. Here I'm cleaning up all four sides and then I'll clean up the ends. 
 

 

 

I'm transferring the hole location to my mid-level piece below. Then I drilled and tapped some 5/16-18 holes for my button head cap screws.
 

 

 

I didn't like the blocky look so I used a corner round tool with a 1/2 radius to soften the ends.
 

 

 

I'm getting ready to mount a round handle to the mid-level piece and knowing what people might do while playing an escape game, I made it much harder for someone to unscrew the actual handle. That's a 1/2-13 socket head cap screw that I'll be using along with a 3/16" hardened steel dowel pin to the equation. This should prevent anyone from being able to remove the round handle. All this will make sense in a minute.
 

 

 

This brass bar is 1" diameter X 8" long. I'm going to cut it to 6" long and machine it into a handle.
 

 

 

I figured out exactly where I wanted the tapped hole to be in relation to the dowel pin. Then I drilled and reamed the 3/16" dowel pin hole first and then tapped the 1/2-13 threads.
 

 

 

Next I cleaned up the diameter and also put a 1/4" radius on one end. Now this is an unconventional way of putting a radius on something in a lathe because this is a milling tool. But when you don't have the correct concave radius lathe tool, you make do with what you have. Whatever works you know!
 

 

 

I put a series of grooves with a radius along the length of the handle. This does two thing: first it's easy on the hands and second, it's easy on the eyes.
 

 

 

Here you can see how the bolt and dowel pin arrangement is, and how it will prevent someone from unscrewing it.
 

 

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