K&M 215 Thread Adapter, 1/2 and 3/8" Female Thread, 5/8" 27 Gauge Male Thread (Zinc-Coated)

Not great, but apparently the only game in town

We needed to adapt 1/2-13 threaded rod to 5/8-27 mic stand threads. There are all sorts of thread adapters out there, but we could find nothing that was 1/2-13 female to 5/8-27 male except this one, not even from a large industrial supply house (M aster-Carr). We were unsure about this one, because K&M's description said 3/8 & 1/2, it didn't specify thread pitch. Turns out it is 1/2-13. We didn't even check the 3/8 opening, but assume it's 3/8-16. However, the 1/2-13 end wouldn't thread onto some rod we'd purchased at Home Depot. Even clamping the adapter in a vise with rubber jaws, and using ChannelLock-style players to turn the rod, we couldn't get the threads to engage beyond 1 or 1-1/2 threads. A thread gauge confirmed that the pitch was 13 TPI, so we ordered higher-quality threaded rod from M aster, thinking maybe the cheapy Home Depot stuff was slightly oversized. The threads on the M aster rods were more nicely formed (sharper teeth), but they wouldn't engage the adapters any more successfully than the first rods had. So we put a 1/2-13 tap into the unit and threaded it in as far as it would go, and sure enough, it removed all the plating from the inside of the hole, and - with as much coercion as we could muster - the rods went in further. But not fully. See, while a 3/8-16 tap would have been able to pass completely through the center of the adaptor and remove the plating fully, the 1/2-13 tap could not, since the hole steps down from 1/2 to 3/8 internally. Our standard tap - designed for through-holes - wouldn't cut all the way to the internal diameter change because it's tapered at the start, to allow the tap to start cutting gradually, and then more and more as it passes fully into the bored hole. What we needed was a 5/8-13 bottoming tap, designed to tap to the bottom off blind holes. So we bought one, and this finally did the tric. A simple thing on its face - but a pain to accomplish. It worked in the end, so two stars, but really K&M: ???