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I spoke with my friend with the screw machine house to see what it would
take to come up with some threaded rod which could be used for this
firewall pass-thru stud and came up with some interesting information.  He
already manufactures a copper stud for a power transmission company which
is 2-3/8" long but is 1/2-13 threaded on each end, with about a 3/4" long
unthreaded area 1/2" diameter in the middle.  I suspect we could get those
from him relatively inexpensively as the engineering and setup is done and
he could remove some extras from a standard run.  

Rather than taking something like this, though, which I suspect is way too
thick for our purposes, it is possible for us to have some custom studs
fabricated to our specifications, and their cost could be kep reasonable if
we were to purchase enough of them.  I thought that a 5/16-18 or 3/8-18
part would be more than adequate and suggested a 3" length, with 1"
threaded on each end and 1" unthreaded in the middle.  Considering material
costs and what it would take him to stand a guy at a machine to grind these
out (this is a commercial operation and he does need to consider his usual
costs of doing business) I figure you can have one part made for $40, or we
can band together, order 50 of them and get them for maybe $5 apiece... if
there's a reasonable demand I'll be happy to put the deal together and get
the stuff made, I just need to know if there's enough interest out there to
consume a small production run.
    
<Marv>