Random little project of necessity becomes more involved than anticipated

[PJ]

Long wind description incoming....Small battery in safe in the bedroom died so had to retrieve backup key from large safe.
So a few years ago the lever handle on the large safe ended up "stripped" out as in spinning on the shaft that connects to the lock mechanism.  At the time I took it all apart and found the shaft sheared in torsion, like it was made of some Chineseium pot metal.  Whatever, so I reverse engineered the old shaft and made a complete new one from real steel save for this weird triangular tooth pattern they used to positively engage and clock the rotation of the lever handle.  You can see the pattern in one of the pics of the lever.  Anyway, I wasn't up for duplicating that and decided to just roll with only friction of a SHCS tapped already in the end.  Worked fine until attempting to open the safe and retrieve a key, friction gave up, handle spinning again.  Had some time so I decided to just setscrew it with a dog tip into a hole drilled with handle clocked at the proper orientation.  Easy enough.  But too bad I wanted the setscrew to come from the bottom to not be as visible of a hack.  Slapped it in the vise with some vblocks then I realized my normal drill chuck was too fat to not interfere with the lever.  No problem, swap for a small 1/8 cap chuck I rarely get to use.  Except the tap and clearance drills for the #10-32 setscrew are larger than .125   Fine, chuck up one of my #21 drill bits and turn down the shank to .125.  Then I realized even with the small chuck sticking way out from the collet and the length of the drill bit would just barely make it thru the handle and not have the nose of the spindle hit the handle.  Somehow I managed to get a simple hole poked in and tapped but it wasn't as straightforward as it should have been.   Tapping was fun also.  no way to spin the tap handle and of course too large to grip with the little chuck for a guide.  Eyeballed it straight and turned a 1/4 at a time with a tiny adjustable wrench.  Not ideal.  At this point I was like Geeezus Fk a silly little tapped hole and Im farting around to no end.  Then to turn a dog point on a setscrew.  Used 2 nuts locked together to be able to grab in the chuck without boogering threads. That was fun as the cutting pressure pushed the assembly back into the chuck.  Lucky I caught it and reset. tightened the doody out of it and gnawed a dog on the tip.  Of course now the start of the threads were deformed and wouldn't thread into the handle.  Well in my pops old tool box were a handful of threading dies and yep, a #10-32   First time ever I got to use one of 3 die stocks collecting dust.  Ran the setscrew thru the die a few times and all good.  Assembled everything and my safe now works good as new.  I suppose the moral is why I chose to come from the bottom vs the sides or top and make my life 20x harder and how simple little projects get out of hand when you really just want to quick get something done!
Thats my story and I stand by it   

[PJ]

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[PJ]

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