1) Submitted by
Gary Fixler, from Los Angeles, CA
on 9/24/2008
Customer Rating:
I recently finished up a little tabletop TV riser stand for my mother and wanted something a bit more decorative than the standard knob for its tiny (3"Wx10"H) side cabinet doors. She loves countryish/natural things.
On my first-ever trip to a real Rockler store (wonderful experience - Torrance, CA), I noticed these very pretty leaf pulls and knew I had been saved, as I had found nothing 'nature' at several local hardware stores. These are much prettier with more detailed veining than is shown in the website photo. Their standoffs were far too tall for my tiny cabinets - they looked absurd sticking way off the face like that - so I turned about 3/8" off the ends in my mini lathe.
As they were, the screws were too long even at the original standoff length to tighten into my planed-down doors, which are about 0.45" thick. They were much too long with the shorter standoffs, so I turned them down to length in the lathe as well. Then I realized that one of the standoffs wasn't tapped as deeply as the other - only about 1/8" left at the new length - but I had the #8-32 tap on hand. The rest of the bore in the soft metal tapped all the way in quite easily.
While installing them, I drilled holes just the right size to slip in the screws, but then realized that the screws were quite different. One was golden (brass?) and the other silver, and one had a larger head, and was fatter than the other, though both were #8-32 as far as I could tell. I had to drill that hole one or two more sizes up to get the second screw to fit through.
While test-tightening one with a screwdriver to check the screw depth, my closed hand - holding the leaf tightly - rather easily broke the stem off the leaf, crumbling the soft plating around the breakline a bit. I used a metal epoxy, taping the leaf to the edge of a table to get the break line level, and balancing the stem on that overnight to repair it. It's now strong again, but you can see the break line if you look. I'm probably going to pick up another pull on my next Rockler trip.
It's been a quite an adventure just for some knob pulls, but my needs were fairly non-standard. I'm sure these will work great on a standard 3/4" thick door with no modifications, and they are quite lovely. I think the stems are a bit fragile, though, so keep that in mind if these doors are going to be around any rough-housing. I would also recommend mounting them at an angle that naturally keeps people from grabbing them in a manner in which they would put any pressure on the stems.
"I ordered a replacement part for a desk at home. It is actually better quality than the original and fit perfectly! I called to make sure the package had the number of parts I needed prior to placing my online order. The folks were very helpful and the part came within a few days! I will definitely use them in the future! " -
Judy C.
- 09/29/2008 See more...
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