Ever looked at a knitting pattern, seen that it requires a certain size of circular needle, gone to your (very) extensive collection of needles and yet found that you
still don't have the ones you need?
Inevitably any circular needles you buy will only be used once and then annoying hang around being the wrong length for anything else.
Experiencing this myself, I went to the wonderful pinterest.com and searched for how to make some myself. I found a nice 'how to' guide but it not only required the use of tiny drill bits to drill into already thin pieces of wood (which the author admitted had a tendancy to break), but comments suggested that the join between needle and the cably bit wasn't smooth - obviously I wanted my home made needles to work as well as bought ones!
Anyway, I spend an afternoon messing around, and have come up with a
dirt cheap, super
easy and very
effective method. Here goes:
You will need:
- A bamboo double pointed needle (Or a piece of wooden dowel ~20cm long)
- Strong scissors or a little hacksaw
- Sandpaper
- Tweezers/ pliers
- Unwanted USB cable or similar electrical cable
- A small file (I used one from a toolkit but a good nail file can work too with more effort)
- Superglue
Step 1:
Using scissors score the whole way
around the needle and then snap in half with your hands.
Step 2:
Cut electrical cable to required length. Remove the innards from your cable using tweezers/pliers!
Step 3:
Using sandpaper, sand down the cut end of the piece of needle so
that it is nice and tapered. (If using dowel, you will have to shape the other end too, obviously!)
Step 4:
Push the electrical cable over the end as far as you can, and mark where it reaches on the stick.
Step 5:
Using the file,
work away at the wood slowly
and carefully to create a sort of step all the way around so that the
cable will fit snugly over the wood and meet it with no bump or gap. Make sure
it is even all the way around.
Step 6:
Without gluing your fingers together, glue the cable onto the
needle. Allow to dry and then sand/file the join until it is perfectly smooth.
Repeat steps 3 to 6 for other half of the needle and there you have it!
Here's one I made earlier (it works really well!):
