Block Plane for Travel Tool Chest Build Process

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I've never made any wood screws before; following this experience, I'm not sure I ever will again! I wanted some custom wood screws to help hold the brass base to the body. I'd like these wood screws to be as invisible as possible, so I don't want a slot of any sort in the screw head. Therefore, I thought I'd have a go at making some custom screws, out of CZ121 brass to match the brass used for the base.

Turning something long and thin is always a bit of a challenge. The way I approached it was to start with a bit of 10 mm brass bar and drill a centre hole in the end. I could then move it out from the chuck and support the end with a tailstock centre and turn a reduced section in the middle:

I ground a custom HSS tool to (very roughly) match the profile of a commercial wood screw and then turned a 2 mm pitch thread on the middle section:

A chamfering tool was then used to shape the two ends of the threaded section:

That left me with a two-in-one wood screw...

...which I held to the bench vice in a rather unconventional way and hacksawed into two pieces:

I then mounted each screw in the soft jaws and turned a point on the end.

That process worked really well for the first pair. The second pair snapped during threading, as did the third pair, so I switched to an alternative process where I made them one at a time. I didn't take any photos, but it was essentially the same as the process above (still with a tailstock support), except that the threaded portion was half the length and the bit on the end providing tailstock support was cut off and binned after threading.

With that done, I had four custom screws to help hold the base in place.

The screws got waxed, and the inside face of the base was sanded to provide a better glue "key" and then everything was prepared ready for gluing the base to the body:

In that photo you can see the clearance slot that's been milled to allow space for the cam bush poking through the hole in the bottom of the wooden body.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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