Spatula Upgrade

I made two spatulas back in October of 2022, one for my daughter Tracey, and the other was mine. Once Tracey had hers and used it, she told me that a hole in the handle to hang it up with would be nice. I told her no problem so that's what I'll be doing to her spatula below. Call this project an 'Upgrade' if you will.

Now there are a lot of choices here, I could just drill a hole in the handle and call it a day, or I could do something a little more fancy. After telling my son-in-law what I was getting ready to do, he suggested using some brass. I thought this was a great idea so that's what I'll be doing here.

Working With Brass

I've had this piece of brass in my machinist tool box for many years and primarily used it as a soft-punch. This punch was used with a hammer and with it being made out of softer material, it was forgiving on delicate projects. Anyways, I had to straighten it before I could use it and then turned it on my lathe.

The diameter is just under 7/16" so it will go into a hole that is exactly 7/16". I also drilled and reamed a 1/4" hole through the center, which can be used with some kind of cord or strap of some kind.

I placed a piece of scrap wood under the handle, drilled my hole and used a 7/16 diameter end mill to size it with.

I plan on using epoxy to hold the brass piece in so I roughed up the outer diameter or O.D. and also used my Dremel with a small burr to put four grooves along the length. These grooves and rough surface is to give the epoxy some place to hold on to. If I had a tighter fit then there wouldn't be much room for the epoxy to do it's job.

I'm using five minute epoxy and spread it all over the O.D. of the brass, then slid it in place.

I placed the spatula in my work vise (with soft jaws) while gluing and to make sure I had my brass piece sticking out evenly. I machined the brass oversize by .020" which means a small amount is sticking out of both sides. Then I come back later and sanded it flush. Once the sanding was finished, I also put a coat of mineral oil over everything.

Here it is all finished.

The brass adds a nice contrast to the handle.

I'm not sure what my daughter is going to use to hang it up with, but the brass should hold up much better than the wood only.

If you look close you can see a small chamfer in the I.D. which I did by hand just to get rid of the sharp edge. I hope my daughter likes it because she doesn't know about the brass insert, she just knows I put a hole in it...which I did!