I got a 1 foot piece of 3/4 ABS rod for $8.00 at:
Search there for "ABS rod"
http://www.smallparts.com/
Dissassembly of the X52 was a bitch. I drilled out the end of the captured acorn nut on the handle later to ease re-assembly.
I did a lot of whittleing and fileing on the shaft of the MSFFB to remove protuberances and key the X52 shaft into slots.
A friend in the adhesives manufacturing biz did the glueing for me, the best he could tell me about what he used was "MMA".
The wiring and soldering was a fussy job (clean your tip on a damp sponge OFTEN).
The rest of the assembly went pretty easy, and to my suprise everything worked. (*see below)
If I were doing it over:
I'd make the ferole out of Stainless steel not ABS.
I'd shop around for thinner wire than the bulky 22 gage multistrand that I had on hand.
*The lights on the X52 Hotas stoped working, except the power on light which works, as do all the other lights.
The x52 programing software doesn't like what it sees and is confused. (I don't use it anyway)
The 3 mode switch on the stick doesn't seem to do anything without the software.
I think I may be able to fix this by playing with the, now unused, hall sensors in the X52 base.
(try to fool the software into thinking nothing is amiss)
The X52 handle is much heavier and longer that the stock MSFFB handle, add to this the extra legnth of the ferole,
and the stick is a bit top heavy. The FFB motors seem more stressed and the effects somewhat reduced.
When the power switches off it tends to fall heavily to the side stops.
The increased legnth does seem to add a bit more precision though.
The MSFFB base is much heavier than the X52 base.
When you see how flimsy the connection between the X52 shaft and stick is, you won't casually lift the stick up by its handle anymore.
And thanks so much to Sully_pa for the inspiration to try this.
Solved the software problem by pluging in to a different (rear) usb port.
All is working nicely now.