A Closet Door Knob Revivification

I have a couple of knobs from an old pair of bedroom closet doors that are in need of some work. Here's a view of them.

Needless to say, that paint job has to go. I want the knobs to end up with a metallic, silvery colour. I have on hand some steel wheel paint that may be ideal, if the spray can still works; the spray paint can is pretty old.

Another problem is that those No. 12 x 1" fastening screws are too short. Something a little longer is needed. All I have on hand that may be suitable is some M6 x 35mm machine screws.

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With a little judicious reworking of the knobs' bores, I was able to get the M6 screws to fit. The hardwood that the knobs are made from is tough enough that I was able to get it to take an adequate machine screw thread.

Paint stripper took care of the bulk of the latex paint, but the knobs needed to be sanded to paint-readiness on the lathe. A mandrel was needed. I sawed the head off an M6 screw, slotted one end of the screw and I had a rudimentary mandrel, like so.

And here we are with one of the knobs just sanded to paint-readiness.

A coat of grey primer, and two coats of steel wheel paint and I have my finished knobs.

All-in-all, not a bad recovery from the mess that the knobs were when I started.

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Paddle Switch -- Busy Bee Cat. No. B2416P

Paddle switches on workshop machines are a good idea; there's no groping about for a small toggle switch lever to shut down a machine, you just slap the paddle. So, when I saw Busy Bee's item^[1] on special for $5.99 from the regular $9.99 I bought two -- one for my 10" table saw, and one for an antique 8" table saw that I'm restoring. Here's a view of a switch still in its package.

It's a bit of a challenge to install these things because of their shape and dimensions, but they can readily be made to fit a common surface-mount utility box like the Iberville BC1110.

You'll need a blank box cover like the Iberville BC11-C-4. Create a 21mm x 37mm rectangular opening^[2] in the cover, like so.

That size of opening accepts the switch nicely.

The switch's terminals are 1/4" male spade terminals. Ordinary straight female spade terminals will work, but you'll have to bend things a bit to get the affair to fit inside the box, like so.

And here we are all buttoned up and ready to cut wood.

That's a big improvement over the toggle switch that was there before.

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Notes:

[1] Busy Bee Cat. No B2416P is a SPST switch. There's also a DPST version, Cat. No. B2417P -- same price.

[2] The switch is made to metric dimensions, so I stated the opening dimensions in mm. A near equivalent in inches would be 13/16" x 1 7/16", but an opening that size would be slightly undersize.

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