[Shop-talk] What the heck screw do I need? And where do I get one?

[David Scheidt]

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 9:02 PM, Dave Cavanaugh <cavanadd at frontier.com> wrote:
> In the late 19th century and on into the early 20th century a lot of this
> stuff wasn't standardized and manufacturers either made up their own threads
> or used threads no longer readily available. Vintage Stanley handplanes are
> a good example of this.  None of the threads on a Stanley plane are of a
> (currently) standard thread pitch.  Your doorknobs may be the same situation
> and your best bet might be to rethread them to the next largest standard
> size.

That reminded me to look at a list of Singer thread sizes.  (Singer
were extraordinarily vertically integrated, and made all their own
parts, and since they started in 1860 or so, they pretty much made up
their own threads.)  9/32 X 28 is one of them, which matches what I've
measured.  It's not one of the common oddball singer threads though,
which are still in use today.  (I have a modern Japanese industrial
sewing machine, which is all metric, except for the needle fixing
screw, the presser foot fixing screw, and the tapped holes in the bed
for fixing attachments to, which are 9/64X40.  )  Hmm, probably means
someone has them, though.

I don't want to tap, because I need like five of them,  and I have a
whole house full of otherwise identical knobs.  It's also a bass
shell, with a steel inner part.

-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com