good afternoon YouTube so I have this old tap and die set it's not very high quality so I'll
use these mainly for chasing threads on nuts and bolts just to clean them up there it's just
a carbon steel tap and die set and it's pretty old like I said I think this is probably going
on 35 40 years old something like that and one of the things I've never liked about it this is
the die holder it's very uncomfortable to use it's got these like quarter inch diameter handles and
they're really short I was wondering if I could make some handles for these to make them a little
bigger and a little bit longer and a little more comfortable because these are really Square on the
ends you can see the end there it's it's knurled but there's no rounding over here and it you know
when you're really pushing here like I'm I've got a 7 16 20 die here and using the larger diameter
dies you really have to put a lot of force on the handles and it you know it just digs into
your palm there I was uh digging around and I found some Delrin Rod that I had this is half
inch 12 and a half millimeter Delran rod and what I did was figure out how big this case was
and I could just fit about a three and a half inch length there on each side have it still fit
in the case this is about 9 16 or 14 millimeter inside so I thought well heck that might might
actually work so yeah let me set up the lathe and we'll see if we can drill these things
okay I figure the first thing I'll do is use a center bit there
I'm not quite sure what size drill bit oh okay that's point two six nine seven millimeters
and then the neural part is a little bit bigger but anyway I think I'll start with a
quarter inch bit because I want to basically press these on so let's get it up there
let's round off that bottom end got the hole drilled up in the middle and I think I went
deep enough there let's just see just to the top of the flutes I've got a chamfering bit here
that's a nice rounded off end there that should be a lot more comfortable
on the palm there now I guess before I do the next one we'll have to I can pop that on there
it might be a little too tight yeah maybe I'll try like a six and a half millimeter let me
grab another bit here okay I've got a six and a half millimeter bit I think I'll try that next
foreign
see what that feels like here
let's see yeah I think I might want to go up one more let's say we're going up to seven here
I think that's going to work a little better I can get it
to start and it's it's still pretty tight on the knurling there foreign
handle turned
two of them drilled to seven millimeters so I think what I'll do is just slip that
but yeah it's a pretty good tight fit I think
and that is bottomed out yeah oh that's nice I guess I could have drilled the hole a little
bit deeper but that thing is not coming off of there oh yeah that one does I think this
is the one I drilled double drilled or actually triple drilled it because every time you drill
you enlarge the hole the first one I did I just did one single seven millimeter pass
oh yeah much nicer feels better on the hands twice the diameter there a little
more grip the other thing I'll do here I'll pull these out and I've got a little bit of
uh Loctite 638 retaining compound I think I must have put something some sort of thread
Locker on there problem is these threads don't go in very far they just go in a couple of turns
a little bit of that stuff on there and get it down like that get this one down here
maybe let that set up for a while and this might be good to use okay yeah this this uh die holder
works a lot better now you can get a grip on the handles and they don't dig into your hands
so yeah just working this one down kind of chasing these threads the worst part right there I think
oh yeah so much nicer this is painful to use before it was so sharp and small
it's just the feel in your hands you know pushing against that and it's just it's big enough you can
grab yeah again no real Dimensions just make it whatever size material you have and like in
this case it had to fit in the case or in the holding tray so I figured make it just barely
small enough to fit in there and use what I had and that's what I had so I used it so I hope you
found that helpful if you did give the video a thumbs up and as always thanks for watching