Hexagonal Aluminum Handles

Hi,
today I just want to share a little idea about tool-handles, I came across lately. In a hardware store I found hexagonal aluminum rods in the size of a classical wooden pencil and I thought, these would make some nice tool handles. The wrench size of these rods is 7.0 mm. So I cut off pieces with a length of 10-11 cm from these aluminum rods like you can see on the following picture.

Then I drilled an axial hole on each side. In fact I made three versions with holes in 1.0 mm, 2.0 mm and 3.0 mm size for holding 1mm, 2mm and 3mm tool tips like you can see on the following picture. I confess it is not easy to get the holes exactly centered. After that I drilled in small holes with a diameter of 2.5 mm in at a 90 degree angle to the first hole and about 0.5 cm from the end of the rod. In this holes I cut threads with a m3 size, so headless set screws with m3 size will fit in.

These set screws will fix the tool tips inside the handle. Of course you don't need the whole side-holes-and-set-screw thing. Instead of that you just can glue the tool tip inside the axial holes with metal glue, but I prefer the set screw solution because it gives me the option to change the tool tips and to adjust the length of the tool tips.

Finally I bevel the ends of the tool handles because I don't like these hard edges on my tools, but this is more an aesthetical aspect then a technical need. I do this by fixing the rod into an electric drill set it into rotation and carefully grind it down with an electric file or a usual metal file.

Finally the whole thing looks like that:

What you can do at last is to give the handles a nice and smooth surface by using fine grinding paper and a polishing wheel (I still have to do that).

Ah, I nearly forgot to point out a main advantage of this tool beside the fact that it feels like a pencil. It didn't accidentally roll from your desk because of the hexagonal shape and this is a big point, especially if you use small and delicate tools that could easily be damaged.

So I hope you like this idea. See you next time.