| I reckon I'd have to ask "Why use stainless?" After all, mild steel is easily machineable and still so much harder than brass that it would seem to me to be a more obvious choice if you are making your own. If you happen to be able to "lay your hands on" a nice set of stainless balls (perhaps from a bankrupt bearing retailer?) then of course that's what you'd go with. But I do agree, it's going to be a royal pain in the backside to try to drill and thread those things.
In any case, tool steel or machine steel is what you'd have if you used ball bearing balls; stainless is notoriously poor at fatigue resistance (not an issue for your use but one reason why it isn't used for bearings). Reckon you could take a set of machine steel balls, have them annealed (softened), then machine and thread them followed by a quick retempering.
Or maybe just see if you can buy a set from Ferree's Tools and save a lot of headache. |