Roller Nut

[Eldon]

After blowing up 5 bases (not literally - no blood spilled). I'm happy with my 6th. I ended up cutting off a piece of electronic heat sink I had in the shop from some item I took apart.
I'm planning on using a 3/16 inch shaft.
The rollers are another matter I've tried a number of ways to drill the center of a round rod to no avail yet. 95% of them have been off centre enough that I couldn't use them.
I've tried the inside race of R3ZZ NMB bearing, it has a round groove around the middle. I opened up 4 more computer hard drives for more bearings (they have 2 each) but they were all different sizes.
I've ordered some aluminum standoffs today with predrilled holes from Fastenall in case my next step doesn't work.
My next step will be to use the brass valve stem from a tubeless tire. The inside diameter is 3/16 and I can cut it to length to suit and use as rollers.

I was also in Auto Home Paints today they have automotive door pins and their bushings I'm sure they could also be reworked to fashion a shaft and nut rollers.

So far all I know is what won't work for me. I'll keep you posted.

[burt]

What about the brass ball end off a bass guitar string ?

[bobby burns]

I'm with Burt here. The old Sho-Bud permanents had string ball ends for rollers and they seemed to work fine and sound great. They are easy to find, you've most likely thrown away enough in your life to make nuts for all the guitars you could ever build.

[Eldon]

Here's one thing I really appretiate about you guys -- the willingness to chime in with more ideas and options.

[Bent]

Hey Eldon, I know you're a do-it-yourself kinda guy, but I have a suggestion. As I have found out lately(from an engineer) it is critical for sound transfer to build the rollers right, so the string vibration is deadened as little as possible.

I have a buddy with a lathe, He could turn some rollers, gauged to the strings exactly according to the specs of my engineer buddy. They would be brass, gauged and sized to the string.
My lathe guy is quite reasonable too.

Let me know what you think of this. Just a suggestion.

[Eldon]

Appretiate the suggestion Bent. Out of curiosity I'm going to try a bit more myself. I've got a line on a couple of local machinists, I'll talk to them first and see what happens.