... The travel on "normal" headless tuner is about 1" IIRC, so You'll be fine...
+1.
Even 1/2" should suffice, or so has been my experience. For direct pull tuners I like tapping/cutting threads at 40 TPI which seems to be a nice balance between tuner knob turning ease, low revolution count and accurate tuning ability.
This is really coming along nicely... very cool.