Not wanting to buy a $40 shift ball, I decided to make my own. I had problems at first trying to figure out what to do about a ball, and after much thought, thought that I would end up probably just buying the $40 one and being done. However, this is where going on that date your girlfriend/fiance/wife can really help you out! After the date, I was right by SkyCraft and decided to stop in to try and get some sheet metal, since normally they have big panels for really cheap. Unfortunately, this trip was fruitless on the metal, they had none! They did however, have a box of Blue painted, wooden balls. Just what I needed for the shift knob! I bought two, and they totally broke my bank at $0.50 a piece, but it was worth it! (They didn’t actually break my bank, $1 is cheap!)
My plan was to simply sand down the blue paint, do something about the numbers, and clear coat it, showing the nice wood grain like my steering wheel at some point will be. However, this was not the case. The first step I took was borrowing a wooden letter/number punch set and punching the 1-5 and R. The bottom row turned out fine, but the top row was much more slanted than I would have liked… From here I tried to sand the ball, thinking it should be rather easy. Well it wasn’t. I sanded and sanded and even ended up attaching it on my drill press and even after 20 minutes, still way to much blue! If I kept at it, I would have worn through much more of the ball than I would have liked, as is the bottom is slightly egg shaped now. I decided to just stain it black like my custom door panels, which turned out alright, although you can’t really see the wood grain at all.
From here, I took a pencil and sprayed the tip with some Krylon Silver paint, and carefully dabbed each number. Which, btw, after all the sanding, I wet the knob and the numbers protruded from the knob, Sweet! The 5 and 4 didn’t work the best and got a little extra silver that I tried to hide with black sharpie (Doesn’t work the best). Once dried, I applied 3 coats of Spar Varnish. The first coat made the silver on the 5 run slightly, but over all, turned out a lot cheaper than 40 bucks! Mainly since the ball was $0.50 and I had everything else on hand.
