How To Make Plastic Hex Nuts

So don’t ask me why, but for some reason I decided it would be fun to make my own plastic hex nuts. This is how I did it.

I picked up some UHMW – ultra high molecular weight plastic, and you know, with a name that fancy it’s gotta be good! I believe this stuff is sold as a table saw runners, but at 3/8ths of an inch, it was the perfect height to make a hex nut for a number 10 machine screw.

At the drill press, I’m drilling a hole through the center, and I use setup blocks to land the hole in the correct spot.

I’ll drill with the same bit, in a scrap piece of 3/8” plywood, except this time the drill bit is actually left inside, and you’ll see why in a second.

At the mitre saw I tilt the head to 30 degrees, slide the plastic into that drill bit embedded in the plywood, and make a few cuts. Not for the faint of heart to be making saw cuts with a metal drill bit this close to your blade… but if I figured it will either work, or make for an even cooler video.

Fortunately, it just worked.

So now I can take that hexagonal prism with a hole through it, and use a tap to thread the hole.

Finally I chuck up the whole piece in a handheld drill and saw off a hex-nut sized chunk. Apart from scratching it up a little while sawing, this turned out pretty well.

Homemade hex nuts… check. Probably not as cool as the larger nut and bolt I made with a router some time ago, but at least this one plays nice with readily available machine screws.