A finished project..

I decided to put my newly acquired lathe skills to work and build some manly Christmas presents. I ordered 5 Ferro sticks from this site that measure 4 inches by 1/4 inch in diameter - but they needed some caps to hold on to them with.

First - I grabbed an old left over bar of aluminum from the scrap bin. It originally measured 1" in diameter. So I turned it down to 0.750 inches (+/- .005)

See picture one below:

Then I knurled the outside diameter and cut parted off 0.500 peices. Due to a bent rod during parting I had to settle to ban saw off a bunch.

See picture two:

Then I quickly put them in the mill and faced them at .500 (+/- .010).

I sanded them with some emory cloth to give it the 'brushed' look.

See picture three:

I had planned to drill out the center while on the lathe - and did so with 3 or 4 - but that did not work out for all. So over to the mill and a .500 2 flute end mill for the ferro stick to rest in and then a 4 fluted center cut end mill for the fob hole and VIOLA!

See the rest of the pics:

The knurling is .050 deep and works very well for strikes anywhere matches. I just need to epoxy (as threading did not work well) them in place. I did not get a chance to drill all the fob holes.

But - I have a working prototype.

Add an annoyingly bright fob (to find it if you drop it in the bush) with silly skulls on them to look EXTREME and you have a cool Christmas present.







Jason