Grounding

[Bassman203]

I've been looking into building pedals for awhile, and I decided to practice drilling through metal, soldering, etc. by making as simple of a pedal as possible, so I used a momentary push button to make a kill switch type pedal. All it is is an input jack to the switch to an output jack. Would this require grounding? If so, how do I do it? Do I just run a wire from one component to the chassis?

[rcubed]

You need ground going from the sleeve of the input jack to the switch to the sleeve of the output jack.

[Bassman203]

That's all? I always thought of a ground connecting to something outside the circuit. I guess I need to read up on it!

[rcubed]

You didn't mention a circuit board. You need to ground that as well.

[niftydog]

There's "ground" which is an arbitrary reference point in a circuit, usually a zero volts. Then there's what I call "earth" which is quite literally a connection to the earth itself, used for safety in mains powered equipment. You're possibly confusing the two - they are distinctly different things.

In this case, the ground of your kill switch box is connected to the ground connection of the input and output jacks, which in turn is connected to the ground of your amp. The kill switch simply shorts the signal to ground.