When I found this button press in a local junk shop, I didn’t know exactly what it was used for. I don’t think even knew it was called a button press. It did look like it might be useful.
From looking up the Handy Button Machine Company, I found out it’s used with a set of cutters and dies to make fabric covered buttons for upholstering furniture. This one is the Handy Junior model.
It looked like a new handle had been welded on at some point. You can see the big glob of metal where the handle meets the cam. From some pictures I found online, the original presses had a curved handle.
This machine has been sitting under my bench for a while, but I still believe it could be useful. So, restoring it seemed like a good project to tackle this weekend.
The first step was to take the whole thing apart.
(Ignore the shiny carriage bolt in the middle, I used it as a punch to drive out the main pivot pin)
The painted parts were stripped and I ran a wire wheel, either in an angle grinder or chucked in the lathe, over everything.
Once the paint came off the handle, I could see it was brazed on, not welded.
I don’t know exactly how many brazing rods they used, but they definitely had plenty to burn.
I wanted to make the repair a little less obvious, so I worked some of the brazing material back with an angle grinder, and a file.
The press never sat flat, and always rocked, so I ground a slight hollow in the bottom.
I didn’t get a picture after the grinding, but I also removed a little more from one side, so it would sit flat and square.
The action of the press wasn’t very smooth, so I used a belt sander to clean up the wear surface of the cam.
With everything stripped, cleaned, ground, and filed, I taped off a few areas that I didn’t want painted. All the pins and the spring won’t get painted either.
The handle, base, and the disk each received one coat of self-etching primer and two coats of dark gray metallic paint.
While the paint was drying, I made a wooden base to bolt to the bottom of the press. The surface of the wood was scorched with a propane torch, rubbed with steel wool, and given a coat of paste wax.
The next step was to put everything back together.
While putting the handle back in the base, there was a lot of slop where the handle and cam could slide along the pivot pin.
It seemed like a bad thing, so I turned a couple of plastic spacers to take up the slack.
I think these bits came as part of a TV mounting kit. I didn’t need them for my TV, but throwing them away wasn’t going to happen either.
I sandwiched a flat washer between two of these little plastic rings, and mounted them in a little three jaw chuck. I drilled a hole to match the diameter of the pivot pin through the first one, then used a round nose scraper to turn the face down until it was the right thickness.
Here you can see one of the two spacers in between the cam and the yoke that the pin goes through.
There’s not very many moving parts to this thing, so assembly was simple.
I’ve got a few ideas for projects with this little press. I might be able to use it as a small embossing press for leather or paper. I’ll have to try some things out and see how it goes.
