I'm rebuilding the dash in my 78 step side because I can. In the past, I, like others, had to rely on metal screws to secure the wood dash to the metal, factory dash metal. On a whim, I dove into the Net rabbit trails in search of solutions. In the course of said pursuits, I found jam-nuts and crimp nuts. Both looked like possible, even likely solutions for converting metal screw holes to, for example, 10/24 screws.
When looking into jam nuts, users complained of weak crimping tools that just don't have enough umph to handle larger sized jam nuts.
Looking further, I found jam nut installation tools that worked using common wrenches. They seemed to be reliable, but I would have had to buy a separate one for each sized imperial and metric nut.
Eventually, I found this crimp nut kit. It cost significantly more than the others, but seemed to cover all the bases.
When the box arrived, the first thing I noted was, it's heavy. That's because it came in a nice, well built and well organized case with heads for metric and imperial crimp nuts. As well, the box contained a supply of metric and imperial crimp nuts that are likely to cover whatever I need the tool for, for years to come.
I just took the kit out to the shop and tried installing a 10-20 crimp nut in a piece of scrap flat metal. It did beautifully. That is especially impressive for that I was not very careful about the hole size and the one I drilled was was a bit bigger than it needed to be, but the crimp still took.
After the nut was in place, I tried turning it in my Knipex pliers and could not get it to budge. I ran a 10-20 screw through the nut and it ran in and out smoothly.
Call this one a winner all the way around.
SIDE NOTE: The instructions do tell you to be careful to not tip the crimps side to side during use, to avoid breaking a mandrel.
Only time will tell how the crimper holds up to use.