The New Hotness

Long ago, a wood-base countertop cheese slicer arrived with a tenuous connection between its screw-on knob / handle and the bolt securing the cutting wire. The problem seemed to be boogered bolt threads:

The knob screwed firmly onto a known-good 10-24 screw, not the M5 bolt I expected, so the slicer may be old enough to be Made In America. Ya never know around here.

However, the hex head is essential, because you must hold it while tightening the nut capturing the slicing wire. Not having a 10-24 or even 10-32 bolt in hand, I went full-frontal metric with an M5 bolt.

Even with a full face shield, I don’t like standing in the plane of an abrasive cutting tool, even a piddly Dremel disk, so the slot through the head isn’t the best work I’ve ever presented:

Indeed:

But it’s hereby defined to be Good Enough™ for the purpose.

As you might expect, I ran an M5×0.8 tap into the existing 10-24 knob thread, hand-turning the lathe chuck and lining up the tap wrench with the tailstock.

Drill out the slicer’s frame hole to clear the bolt, re-string wire through slot, tighten jam nut, add a locking nut on the other side, screw on the knob, and it’s All Good:

Ugly, but good.

I expect the re-wrapped wire will break in short order, because you just can’t re-bend steel wire with impunity. So far, so good.