Hard S.E.X.; The Search for Golden Needles

Readers with long memories know that I really like wooden knitting needles, and often make my own knitting needles. This is the further adventures in the excesses of needle making. I am sharing this because it is easily done in the average home workshop, and I think, well worth the effort. ( For a serious knitter with a with a craftsman's bent or handy spouse.)

In Gladys Thompson's introduction to her book on Fisherman's Sweaters, she mentions that they were mostly knitted on long steel needles, which are no longer commonly available. With the Internet, such needles ARE still available; see for example

or the BritishKnitting Guild's site. However, the commercial steel needles are nickelplated to prevent rust, and I find them very slippery, and they just do notfeel friendly. Nor do I like the common aluminium DPN that are inexpensivelyavailable. I do not find wood durable in the finer gauges, and wood is tooeasily broken when making sweaters on thin needles. (I.e., Wood is good forlace.) In the past, I had made several attempts at making my own metalknitting needles, and never come up with anything that was worth the effort.This last fall, as the stash ebbed out as I knit Christmas gifts, there wasthat great cone of fine blue yarn, exposed like a rock in the harbor at lowtide. I had bought it, long ago, with the intent of making fisherman'sgansey - on traditional long steel needles. The house was full of guests,so I went out the workshop - i.e., to hide and perform self indulgent StashEnhancement eXperiments. In that mood, I hit on the idea of using mycordless drill to rotate metal rod against the bench grinder (fine wheel) toform perfect knitting needles from inexpensive metal rod. I think many homeworkshops have a bench grinder and a cordless drill. In fact, my last benchgrinder was lost in a move, and my current grinder is a cast off from aneighbor (he still has two) so we are not talking about fancy machine toolshere.

Brass rod of various thicknesses is available from any good hardware store rather inexpensively. I took my needle gauge to the hardware store and bought brass rod that was about the size of the needles that I wanted, i..e., US # 1. I marked off the lengths and used the grinder to make the cuts by rotating the rod against the grinder, so that by the end of the cut, the tapering of the needle blank was well started. Then, I chucked the needle blanks into the drill and used the drill to rotate the rod as I ground the tapers, shaping by eye. With a sample needle on the bench in front of me, this was a surprisingly fast and easy process. (Wear gloves and eye protection) However, with brass, some care must be taken not to mar the brass blanks in the drill chuck.

Then, I used the drill to hold and rotate the blanks against open coat silicon carbide abrasive paper (400 & 1000 grit) followed by hand polishing with fine crocus cloth and buffing with buffing compound. I made the test set of 4- six inch long DPN of US gauge #1 in about an hour.

With their brightly polished "golden" tips, they are truly gorgeous, and knitting with them is like slicing through soft butter. I left some areas of matt finish so they do not feel slippery. Brass has a lower thermal conductivity than steel, or aluminium and thus does not feel as cold. At small gauges, brass needles have a pleasant heft, but do not feel heavy. And, you (or your hubby) can make needles of different lengths, so you do not work with the weight of a 10" when a 6" will do.

And, the smooth knitting action of brass knitting needles more than compensates for any coldness or heaviness. They are my "golden" needles. That said, brass will tarnish leaving a toxic residue. I tend to work with yarns that have significant spinning oils in them and those oils minimize tarnishing during an active project, but I would not leave brass needles sitting in a UFO for any length of time. I suggest storing brass needles in a cloth sprayed with WD-40 or maybe in the anti-tarnish cloth that they sell for silver. Wash your hands after handling brass, and do not put brass needles in your mouth, and do not let kids play with them. Still, they are far and away the smoothest knitting needles that I own. The very sensuality of these needles means that I am going to do more knitting with fine yarns.

Those old time knitters had brass, but they knitted on steel needles, even though steel is cold to the touch. There had to be reasons. Steel is less toxic, stronger, lighter, and harder. Brass needles will wear and will need to have their points reshaped after a few hundred hours of knitting, while steel will endure. An 18 inch long steel needle will flex less than a similar gauge brass needle when tucked into belt sheath for old gansey style knitting. Steel "music wire" is even more available and less expensive than brass rod, and available in more different thickness than brass rod. However, steel is harder to work.

A set of 4 DPN in steel took about 3 hours to bring to almost the same finish as the "golden" needles, and while smooth, they do not have the same "buttery" feel while knitting. I can leave a bit of matt finish so that they are not as slippery as the commercial nickel plated needles, but the bare steel is going to rust a bit whenever it gets the chance. Bottom line on steel needles - buy them - they are not worth the effort to make unless you need something special. Steel needles are so cheap and the commercial plated needles do not rust (until you wear through the platting.) However, if you are working with a particular, unusual yarn, a significant advantage to making your own needles is that you can modify the tips. You can make the tips more rounded for working with softer yarns and grind more pointed tips for more tightly spun yarns. Concave tips can be ground for slippery synthetic yarns. Oh yes, and you can leave a mat finish so they do not keep falling out. The right matt finish may be the best reason for making your own steel DPN. If you need a single tip for something, put a drop of hot glue or a rubber band on the end of the DPN, and take it off when the project is done.

Oh yes, that huge cone of blue yarn that started all this. I knitted gauge swatches and pattern samples and thought, "Wonderful for a gansey!" Then, I washed the swatches and they shrank!!! and felted with a wonderful soft fuzz that completely obscures the pattern. Definitely an unknown exotic luxury fiber. Since the fuzz obscures the pattern, I will do something very simple like steps and cables. It is going to be so soft and knitted on golden needles - not at all like the hard work of knitting an old time gansey. : ) Maybe! I have not really tried extended knitting on 5 - 18" long brass needles yet! But, I am sure that matching hats and socks will be done on golden needles.

Aaron