[TheForge] Making needles?

[Jerry Frost]

I have a few thoughts but need to know just what you intend. Are you just
looking to repair your shoes? Or are you looking to manufacture sewing
pliers?

I've had good luck in my more destitute past repairing shoes and such with a
speedystitch. Leather needs a triangular leather needle.

The patent drawing says the needle is held with a set screw. All you  need
to do is buy a speedystitch needle and shorten it. Speedystitch needles have
the eye at the sharp end as shown in the sewing pliers and the technique for
sewing is the same. Push the needle through and retract it a bit to make a
loop, pass the lock thread through the loop, remove the needle and pull the
loop tight. Repeat till stitched up.

The tough part about using a speedystitch on shoes or boots is passing the
lock thread, you have to use the speedystitch from the outside so the loops
are on the inside. I managed by pushig the needle through as far as it'd go,
feel it ad feel for the loop as I pulled back. A little practice and it went
pretty easily, WAY easier than using two needles and a saddle stitch.

Shortening a needle is or used to be easy, just hold it in a vise and snap
it off. Put the end you want to keep in the vise to minimize distortion,
give it a whack with a hammer across the jaws and clean the break up on the
grinder of a sharpening stone.

Making needles is another story. You'd need a "V" block and clamp to hold
the needle blank and a really small punch on a guide. Think something like a
spring die under a hammer. The V block will prevent the stock from shifting
sideways so there's no need to center punch the blank, a combination punch
drift and you have your enlarged eye in an enlarged cross section of the
blank. That way if you want it flattened across the eye a few seconds on a
grinder or sharpening stone and it's done. Shapren the needle point and cut
to length. 

Heat treating may be the trick, that's mighty thin stock and it has to be
hardenable or it has a really short work life.

If you're going into production of these pliers I'd just buy needles. If you
have your heart set on mass producing the needles the die I described will
need to have a shear face at the correct length and auto feed mechanism so
you can buy the stock on rolls. Heat treating this scale stock might be easy
on a mass production scale. Run them through an induction coil over the
quenchant and an oven to temper and feed the things through on a belt or
maybe down a ceramic chute.

Jer

-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bruce .
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2013 4:40 PM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: [TheForge] Making needles?

I need a few needles of dimensions I can't find commercially.  The
application is a sewing pliers (US Patent 1,352,508).  I have one of these
pliers and it's great for repairing those damned silly running shoes you
can't seem to avoid these past forty or so years.

The needle needs to be about 1" long, maybe 1.25", "heavy" thickness
(equivalent to a #8 Tandy sewing-awl needle).  Therein lies the rub --
cutting off the commercial needle to an appropriate length gives a needle
that isn't quite appropriate for mounting in the sewing pliers.  I have done
this and it can be made to work, but such commercial needles are not cheap
and I'd prefer to make my own than to pay the price for what ends up being a
second-rate needle.

(BTW, sewing-machine needles seem all to be too long and too thin, though
I'm looking into them further.)

Now, commercial needles are made like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJPpuL2sqQ

In my case, I needn't follow exactly this procedure (even omitting the
machines), but I think the stamping approach to making the eyes might be the
most feasible, if reduced to hand-scale.  I envision partially flattening
the end of a (round) wire, then centerpunching enough to mark and spread the
flat, and either punching it through or drilling it through.  This would
result in a large round hole, which could be cleaned internally of burrs,
then "flattened" laterally to produce the traditional long, narrow needle
eye.

So the question come down to:  How to centerpunch a small, partially
flattened wire such that the punch is exactly centered?  Seems to me that
jigs would be needed, and I haven't figured out simple jigs that would work.
Ideas would be welcome.

I've considered, but haven't tried, starting with oversized wire and puncing
an eye in that (presumably easier than smaller stuff), then grinding or
filing off the excess.  I've considered folding over the end and welding it
to itself to make the eye.  These both seem like a lot of extra work.


--
Bruce
NJ
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