Railroad Spike Tap Handle

thingiverse

My friends own a bar across from a train museum so they were interested in making some tap handles using railroad spikes. They had one copy that was made by welding the spike to a threaded mount, but that one was very heavy and caused issues as a tap handle. They asked me if I could print them a lighter tap handle than that one and this was my attempt. Fortunately there was a scan of a railroad spike already here on thingiverse and plenty of tap handle prints to build from. I threw both of those in tinkercad and came up with this as the result. This model doesn't have a natural base for printing, so I had to get creative when I was printing it. I oriented it so the head protruded vertically upward before placing it slightly below the build volume - flattening the back of the railroad spikes head and the threaded portion of the tap handle slightly. The body of the spike was then freely floating supported by supports that were easily removed. Afterwards I spray painted the tap handle black. If you are interested in doing this, you may want to consider additionally coating it with a clear coat to protect the paint. You may want to consider increasing the infill setting to make it sturdier, but at 15% it seems strong enough for most stresses involved regular tap handle usage.