eyes for hooks: still being made?

:I'm about to sew waistbands onto the two pairs of jeans I've just :made, and that means sewing eight hooks and forty eyes.

:The forty eyes wouldn't be so tedious were it not that all the time :I'm working, I know that even though I use filament-polyester :upholstery thread, and I'm careful to buttonhole tightly and never use :so many core threads that the eye has to be forced into the hook, and :I inspect the hooks for rough spots, the steel hooks are going to chew :through the eyes.

:At one time, when you bought hooks, in addition to the loops that come :with then now, there was for each hook a metal eye -- where the loops :look like the letter omega, the eyes look like the letter I, with :loops at each end instead of serifs. This made a very long-wearing :substitute for a buttonholed bar tack.

:Are these maybe still available somewhere on the Web? I'd prefer to :buy them separately, since I need five eyes for every hook and already :have a pound of #3 hooks, but I'll buy a hook and a loop for every eye :if I have to.

maybe what you're looking for....

Wow! Well done, I had no idea such items were available separately. Unlike Joy, I don't really need a huge supply of just hooks or just eyes, but it's nice to know they can be had.

Is this what you're looking for, Joy, bars? Not the U shaped eyes, right?

Kay

>

I don't need a huge supply -- just a few dozen. But huge packages is the only way they come.

The eyes David found are the loop type. I tried an image search to show you what I meant, and look what popped up on the very first page:

And the prices are in dollars. But they could be Australian dollars, or Canadian. I'm so excited that I'm posting before looking into it, and before checking out the other images "eyes hooks" turned up.

Note that if you want eyes you must order loops, and if you want loops, you must order eyes. I tried mail-order before Baer Fabrics went broke, and very carefully ordered loops -- and got loops.

What *does* one do with a gross of loops? And this source sells only a dozen gross.

Bingo! and they'll sell just a gross (a lifetime supply), and they call them "bars" -- no reverse terminology. And the name "Manhattan" strongly implies that there are no customs problems. (I'm in the U.S.)

I wonder why the sizes jump from #3 to #11? (#3 is all I'm interested in, but I'm nosy.)

I think NYC still lacks customs. And Sew True is a US firm, also. Pennsylvania, if I recall correctly.

11 is a big hook sometimes used for heavy costuming needs, or tutus, or clown pants and the like. IIRC they're about 1/2"/ I guess they weren't selling much of #4,5,or 6, which are the other usual sizes besides 0 to 3.

If you have extra bars and want to get rid of them, they're good reinforcements for the tops of walking slits in skirts, and similar high stress positions. Sew them inside, over one side of the bar on each side of the seam that's stressed. I use them as corner reinforcements on things like back pockets for wheelchairs, or for nail aprons.

Kay

:> Is this what you're looking for, Joy, bars? Not the U shaped eyes, right? :>

:Bingo! and they'll sell just a gross (a lifetime supply), and they :call them "bars" -- no reverse terminology. And the name "Manhattan" :strongly implies that there are no customs problems. (I'm in the :U.S.)

:I wonder why the sizes jump from #3 to #11? (#3 is all I'm :interested in, but I'm nosy.)

Lack of demand for sizes 4 through ten, no doubt.

That turned out to be a slight exaggeration when I got the box of fasteners off the shelf. The huge bag of nickel hooks I remembered is actually two small bags, 2.44 ounces of black hooks (bag and all), and

1.67 ounces of nickel hooks. Each bag marked "one gross".

(I weighed them with a soap-making scale, hence the extreme precision.)

But that is hooks beyond life expectancy; might as well be a pound! (Unless the hook-and-eye box falls on my head.)

Also found a card of DeLong (hanging hole removed most of the "Lo" so I'm guessing at that) size 3

14 each hooks, eyes & loops made in U.S.A.

The price is nineteen cents. I'm pretty sure I don't date back quite that far. Ten bars and all the omegas remain, leaving me to wonder what the hooks were used for. Probably fourteen different things.