Reproduction Fisher Knobs

ncwalz

ncwalz

Mostly just a lurker
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I recently had a chat with my oldest son about the possibility of reproducing Fisher knobs. He's a mechanical engineer and I wanted to recruit his assistance in reproducing the brass ring inserts and caps. I thought I'd try using silicone molds and cast the plastic pieces myself.

Yesterday I showed him the knobs, and he mentioned to me that it might be possible to reproduce the plastic pieces with a 3D printer. He has a lot of experience in AutoCAD and the like. Last evening he shared these pics with me including those of a test plastic Fisher 500c tuning knob he printed with just some black resin he had on hand. I understand it should be possible to sand, buff and polish the plastic once it's fully cured.

I'll update the thread if anything comes of this effort.

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Looking for some info about the types of knob caps Fisher used. A couple of 800bs had stamped aluminum knob caps that were very thin and brass-colored on the outside only. The later 500c, 800c and 400 receivers had solid machined brass caps. But did all of these solid brass caps have indented black pointers, or did some have black pointers just painted on? Not sure about that. These are some poor examples I had lying about.
 
Have you seen the Fisher knob caps for sale on ebay. He sells a set for Fisher tube receivers and they are solid brass with indented pointers.
 
Guess what I'm wondering is whether Fisher ever made any solid brass endcaps that had a painted-on black pointer that wasn't indented. I'm thinking that all the nonindented painted black pointer caps are reproductions, but not entirely sure about this.
 
I’m going to agree with you. All of the “big tube receivers” I’ve come across that I know to be original had indented brights.
 
my 800b has indented brights, but only on the chamfer, not on the face. no black markings.
 
notdigital said:
I’m going to agree with you. All of the “big tube receivers” I’ve come across that I know to be original had indented brights.
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Thanks, nondigital: I'm really just interested in the experience of others here as compared to my own.
 
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I checked my stash of endcaps and found one just as you described, Mad. Just one. I think it must have come from a few knobs I purchased on eBay.
 
Small update:

Number One Son has obtained the brown pigment and is making a few trial knobs. It will require a fair bit of pigment so the knobs don't appear too translucent.

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Knob on far left is an original knob. Needs a bit more brown and maybe a bit of black to fine-tune.

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The hole of the reproduction knob is very close in dimensions to the original, and will require a spring clip for the knob to fit securely on the Fisher D-shafts. These seem impossible to source anywhere, so will need to be fabricated. The wide part of the spring clip measures 7mm in width, and resembles the tempered steel of old clock springs, so I ordered a possible suitable candidate from Amazon, and will attempt to make some spring clips from that.
 
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Another small update:

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Looks like colour- and opacity-matching is possible. The original is far-left.

My son will model the remaining knobs while I wait for the clock-spring to arrive for the knob spring-clips.

We've started discussing how we should fabricate the brass caps and rings.
 
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