Faucet Knob

General:

Though this saber on the whole is pretty easy to construct, I must warn you in advance that the faucet knob was the most difficult portion to build. The parts are simple:

1-3/4 OD X .065" WAll ALUM ROUND TUBING Product Code: 134065ARDT Length: 1 and 3/10 inches. This is for making the faucet knob. (This piece is also referred to on the emitter page).
At least one square foot of flashing. Flashing is merely aluminum sheet, and you can buy it at Home Depot. I bought a 10 foot X 10 inch section for $5.01. I think you can get it in much smaller quantities.

Of course, you'll want to sand your aluminum tubing down until it looks like shinny chrome. To make the button looking rectangles which go around the tubing, you need to cut your flashing. I know what you're thinking... flashing is so flimsy. It dents and bends too easy. In fact, it's so thin, you can cut it with an ordinary pair of scissors. Well, this is actually all the strong points about why I used flashing. This piece needs to be cut with absolute precision, and scissors do just that. Don't worry about the buttons denting in the future, because we're gong to fill them with epoxy or some other resin to make them solid. Also, later you're going to need to fit the buttons tight against the cylinder shaped aluminum. If the flashing were any thicker than it is, it would be too difficult to make a tight fit.

The total outer dimensions for the flashing rectangles are, 9/10 of an inch X 1 and 2/10 of an inch.

Please keep in mind that the above image is not a pattern, and it is not to scale. I truly and sincerely wish I could provide one for you, but unfortunately, I do not own a decent graphics program. If anyone wants to make one, I would be eternally grateful!

Once you have the rectangles cut to size, you'll need to measure in from each side 2/10 of an inch. This is represented by the dark red line in the above graphic. Draw a line across so that there is actually another rectangle in the middle of your rectangle.

At each corner, I have drawn two blue lines that extend to the corners of the inner rectangle. As indicated in the graphic, there is a space of 1/10 of an inch between the outer corner and the blue line. You'll need to draw these lines, then cut out the corners. Cut along the blue lines.

This is basically all the cutting you need to do. And I think here is a good place to warn you about how important and necessary it is to be as precise as possible. If you skim here, your faucet knob will look poor! Let's just say I ended up making more than one. Don't draw your lines with a normal writing instrument, like a pen or marker. Use the sharp end of a utility knife or something which will score the aluminum flashing. I used the sharp end of a compass. It worked pretty good.

Okay, enough of that. Now, you just want to bend along the dark line, so that the corners you just finished cutting out meet up together. When you bend them, the angle should be at about 45 degrees. Don't go much beyond this (though you want to go a little bit beyond) or you could ruin your precisely cut piece of flashing. Bend all four sides down, and fill it with epoxy (or some other kind of resin) to make it solid and durable.

Do yourself a favor and use a vise! If you try to use pliers or some other small instrument, you'll probably ruin your flashing. (Again, don't ask me how I know this.)
Protect your flashing! When you bend the pieces in the vice, make sure you put something between it and the vice so that it doesn't get scratched up.

Once you complete your buttons, then place them onto the aluminum cylinder, you'll notice they don't fit tight and snug against it. I rectified this little problem two ways: 1) took the dremmel tool and slightly rounded the bottom inside. I didn't take off much because I didn't want to take too much off. 2) wrapped a piece of heavy grain sand paper around the aluminum tube and sanded the piece against it. This process allowed me to fine-tune the inside curve so that it fit tight against the aluminum tube. Again, this isn't necessarily the best way, but it worked. If anyone has any ideas on how to better fit these pieces, I'm all ears.