I'm assuming that some folk were't pulling my leg when they requested a tutorial on making your own Anglo Saxon style safety pins so here it is!
They are based on the ones dug at Flixborough and I think its Carlton Colville. Very similar ones have been found, not in iron of course, dating back to the Bronze Age
If you want some spring in your safety pins you ned some carbon in your wire. The first batch I made from mild steel (I discovered) and I couldn't get it to harden. I found I'd some springy piano wire, left over from making undercarriages for my silly retro balsa and tissue model planes and that has worked very well. The smaller, 1.5 inch long, ones are made from 17 gauge, the 3 inch one from 14 gauge. Since the most difficult part is hardening and tempering the steel back to it's springiness. If you are using the 17 gauge you can get away without using the heat to bend it. However it was beyond me to bend the 14 gauge as well/much as I wanted to without the application of heat. You could easily get away with making the smaller ones with just using heat to bend (and flatten) the tight curve that the pin hooks into. If you're good with wire, with no heat at all!
Tools. You dont need many at all. I'll assume from here on that you are using heat to aid bending so please allow for this if you ain't. I used a cheap butane powered blow torch on a plastic stand to heat the metal. A small jewellers anvil as that's what I have, a pair of heat proof gloves for handling although you could use pliers, locking ideally. A small hammer (I didn't actually use the larger of the two shown) some room temp water for the rudimenatary hardening and something hard and round, I used a tommy bar and a metal thing with a larger round bit (Sorry for getting technical...) to do the larger pin. You could use the shank of a suitably sized drill bit held in a vice.
Having decided on the dimensions you want the finished pin, (I wanted the 3 inch one to hold a cloak shut), draw it out and using a bit a string get a minimum length of wire you need, then add a bit. The dimensions will be mainly based on the diameter of the metal rods you have to choose from for winding the spring around. You could have a tapering looking pin but I chose not to.
You can try to do this next stage in one go but after trial and error I found it was easier to do it in several stages, mainly as in contact with the cold tommy bar the wire cooled down quickly. Allowing for the fact that the pin side will be shorter than the hook side by the length of the part bent down at 90 degrees and the turn up of the hook at the end of that, heat the cut wire off centre to the high end of cherry red, but not so hot it starts to droop under its own weight and quickly bend it around the tommy bar. When you have a 360 degee bend check that the two straight parts are still the right lengths for the shape you want at the end. Don't get the loop too tight as when it cools it shrinks and it can grip the bar you're forming it around. You then need to do the next nearly 180 degree turn so that, heating and bending so you end up with two arms, one shorter than the other by the diameter of the spring you've formed plus the turn up at the end and whatever fudge factor you are comfortable with. Personally mine's quite high as I'd rather trim stuff down to size than try and add some! You do not want the pin to be parralel with the arm that will have the hook on it. The spring needs to be in tension when the pin is in the hook and this this how its achieved. You are aiming at the open shape of a safety pin, not the closed.
You want the spring to be tight, no gaps between the loops but you can always heat it up and tap it closed,.
Next you want to form the ends of the two arms. The shorter arm is your pin, you could file it or grind it to whatever pointyness you want but since I wanted it fairly blunt as it is to be poked through wool I just heated it up and thinned it down to a point with some light whacks in the anvil, turning it evertime I reheated it.
To form the hook the pin will fit in simply heat and flatten it out, making sure its in line with the spring.
It took me a few gos to work out this is the best order to make them, for the first few I formed the hook at the start and had great trouble getting everything lined up.
Squeezing the arms together until they are parallel judge where you need to bend the hook arm so it crosses the pin with enough overlap to form the hook. Then ensuring that you bend the hook arm in line with the spring heat the bend point and whack the hook end over something with a 90 degree corner until you are happy with it. Heat and light taps will straighten it up.
Now squeezing the pin arm along the bent end of the hook arm judge where you want the hook to be. Make a mental note of this and heat the hook end and make a 90 degree bend.
Check this is in the right place, you can always heat and flatten it and redo it. When you are happy with it, reheat the tip and carefully tap it over into the hook shape, using a bit of the same wire to check it will fit. You can just keep closing the pin but I found using another piece of wire easier.
Thats it formed, however all that heating and hammering will has adversely affected the springiness of the spring. If you have done it without the use of heat the pin will be perfectly usable, but if you have then you will need to harden and temper it. The hardening will put the stiffness back but will make it brittle. How brittle? This brittle.
The tempering removes this brittleness.
To do this first heat the whole piece to a dull cherry red. I think (correct me) that it won't pick up a magnet when you have reached the right temperature. Then plunge it in room temperature water, swirling it about. Its now hardened and brittle. The tempering stage is a bit harder to judge. In theory you can use an oven to heat things to the required 350 degrees. but I wafted the blow torch over it until it was straw coloured, it was very hard to judge so I ended up fudging it by guessing that when the first bit (I heated the tip of the pin up more) was hinting at dark blue the rest was the right temperature! Either way you let it cool slowly and so far none of the ones done this way have snapped or lost their spring!
OK you can buy safety pins for next to nowt but I enjoyed the process! I appreciate some of the pics don't quite tally with the text, some show a later stage as well as the one refered to, thats due to me experimenting in the order of doing it and some pics not coming out.
ATB
Tom
Will ask the wife to correct the spelling and grammar when she gets home....
#
They are based on the ones dug at Flixborough and I think its Carlton Colville. Very similar ones have been found, not in iron of course, dating back to the Bronze Age
If you want some spring in your safety pins you ned some carbon in your wire. The first batch I made from mild steel (I discovered) and I couldn't get it to harden. I found I'd some springy piano wire, left over from making undercarriages for my silly retro balsa and tissue model planes and that has worked very well. The smaller, 1.5 inch long, ones are made from 17 gauge, the 3 inch one from 14 gauge. Since the most difficult part is hardening and tempering the steel back to it's springiness. If you are using the 17 gauge you can get away without using the heat to bend it. However it was beyond me to bend the 14 gauge as well/much as I wanted to without the application of heat. You could easily get away with making the smaller ones with just using heat to bend (and flatten) the tight curve that the pin hooks into. If you're good with wire, with no heat at all!
Tools. You dont need many at all. I'll assume from here on that you are using heat to aid bending so please allow for this if you ain't. I used a cheap butane powered blow torch on a plastic stand to heat the metal. A small jewellers anvil as that's what I have, a pair of heat proof gloves for handling although you could use pliers, locking ideally. A small hammer (I didn't actually use the larger of the two shown) some room temp water for the rudimenatary hardening and something hard and round, I used a tommy bar and a metal thing with a larger round bit (Sorry for getting technical...) to do the larger pin. You could use the shank of a suitably sized drill bit held in a vice.
Having decided on the dimensions you want the finished pin, (I wanted the 3 inch one to hold a cloak shut), draw it out and using a bit a string get a minimum length of wire you need, then add a bit. The dimensions will be mainly based on the diameter of the metal rods you have to choose from for winding the spring around. You could have a tapering looking pin but I chose not to.
You can try to do this next stage in one go but after trial and error I found it was easier to do it in several stages, mainly as in contact with the cold tommy bar the wire cooled down quickly. Allowing for the fact that the pin side will be shorter than the hook side by the length of the part bent down at 90 degrees and the turn up of the hook at the end of that, heat the cut wire off centre to the high end of cherry red, but not so hot it starts to droop under its own weight and quickly bend it around the tommy bar. When you have a 360 degee bend check that the two straight parts are still the right lengths for the shape you want at the end. Don't get the loop too tight as when it cools it shrinks and it can grip the bar you're forming it around. You then need to do the next nearly 180 degree turn so that, heating and bending so you end up with two arms, one shorter than the other by the diameter of the spring you've formed plus the turn up at the end and whatever fudge factor you are comfortable with. Personally mine's quite high as I'd rather trim stuff down to size than try and add some! You do not want the pin to be parralel with the arm that will have the hook on it. The spring needs to be in tension when the pin is in the hook and this this how its achieved. You are aiming at the open shape of a safety pin, not the closed.
You want the spring to be tight, no gaps between the loops but you can always heat it up and tap it closed,.
Next you want to form the ends of the two arms. The shorter arm is your pin, you could file it or grind it to whatever pointyness you want but since I wanted it fairly blunt as it is to be poked through wool I just heated it up and thinned it down to a point with some light whacks in the anvil, turning it evertime I reheated it.
To form the hook the pin will fit in simply heat and flatten it out, making sure its in line with the spring.
It took me a few gos to work out this is the best order to make them, for the first few I formed the hook at the start and had great trouble getting everything lined up.
Squeezing the arms together until they are parallel judge where you need to bend the hook arm so it crosses the pin with enough overlap to form the hook. Then ensuring that you bend the hook arm in line with the spring heat the bend point and whack the hook end over something with a 90 degree corner until you are happy with it. Heat and light taps will straighten it up.
Now squeezing the pin arm along the bent end of the hook arm judge where you want the hook to be. Make a mental note of this and heat the hook end and make a 90 degree bend.
Check this is in the right place, you can always heat and flatten it and redo it. When you are happy with it, reheat the tip and carefully tap it over into the hook shape, using a bit of the same wire to check it will fit. You can just keep closing the pin but I found using another piece of wire easier.
Thats it formed, however all that heating and hammering will has adversely affected the springiness of the spring. If you have done it without the use of heat the pin will be perfectly usable, but if you have then you will need to harden and temper it. The hardening will put the stiffness back but will make it brittle. How brittle? This brittle.
The tempering removes this brittleness.
To do this first heat the whole piece to a dull cherry red. I think (correct me) that it won't pick up a magnet when you have reached the right temperature. Then plunge it in room temperature water, swirling it about. Its now hardened and brittle. The tempering stage is a bit harder to judge. In theory you can use an oven to heat things to the required 350 degrees. but I wafted the blow torch over it until it was straw coloured, it was very hard to judge so I ended up fudging it by guessing that when the first bit (I heated the tip of the pin up more) was hinting at dark blue the rest was the right temperature! Either way you let it cool slowly and so far none of the ones done this way have snapped or lost their spring!
OK you can buy safety pins for next to nowt but I enjoyed the process! I appreciate some of the pics don't quite tally with the text, some show a later stage as well as the one refered to, thats due to me experimenting in the order of doing it and some pics not coming out.
ATB
Tom
Will ask the wife to correct the spelling and grammar when she gets home....
#
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