I Used All Three Lathes

Henry’s teacher from last year had me come in and get her classroom printer hooked up. I noticed a box sitting on her desk.

I asked what it was and she said it was one of the listening stations and the nuts holding some of the audio jacks in had been lost. She was unable to find replacement nuts. Apparently these stations are expensive.

I took it home to fix.

Each of the audio jacks is threaded for the retaining nut.
I measured with calipers. So it’s probably a 6mm thread. A little research and measurement to check and I was left with a 6mm x 0.5mm pitch thread. Unfortunately I did not have a tap that size.

I drilled a piece of brass and gave it a straight knurl on the South Bend (lathe #1).

Set up the largely unused Jet 920 lathe (lathe #2) to cut the metric thread.
Yes, I single pointed the threads. I did about a 1/4” of thread at a time, then removed the piece and…

Cut off a couple of nuts (on the Taig, lathe #3). I did this four times to make the required nuts and a couple of spares.

I put the jacks in place, I used blue loctite on the threads just in case. The two spares were taped inside the case with a note.

Mine aren’t chrome plated and don’t have a spanner slot, but there you are. I need to find a source for the nuts or just buy a tap. I assume this is a problem that will arise again.
I also had two cap-plugs samples that I squirrelled away years ago to put on the two exposed potentiometer shafts.