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. I helped them out by printing a lighter tap handle than that one, and this is my attempt. Luckily there was a scan of a railroad spike already here on thingiverse and plenty of tap handle prints to build from. I combined both in tinkercad and came up with this result. This model doesn't have a natural base for printing, so I got 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. Afterward, I spray painted the tap handle black. If you're interested in doing this, you may want to consider adding a clear coat on top of the paint for extra protection. You might also want to think about increasing the infill setting to make it sturdier, but at 15% it seems strong enough for regular tap handle usage.