Needle wear

Joy Beeson 18 years ago

Just read an advertisement for a "spiral eye" needle; one of the harped-on points was that the needle wasn't plated, so you could sharpen it with an emery board.

Three things raised my eyebrows.

(1) With an EMERY BOARD?

(2) How does plating stop you from honing a needle? If it's because you don't want to grind the plating off, the plating on a worn-dull needle is already gone anyway.

(3) I've bent and broken and lost hand-sewing needles, but I don't recall ever *blunting* one.

Hence this post: have any of you ever worn the point off a hand-sewing needle?

Joy Beeson

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Mary Fisher 18 years ago

I don't think so, but I've worn the shank on a few.

Mary

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Pogonip 18 years ago

Not on a hand-sewing needle, but some really old sewing machines had a small honing stone for sharpening the machine needle. For folks who own an old machine that doesn't take a standard 15 x 1 needle, and have a hard time finding needles to fit (source is usually old Boye general store cases with the little wooden tubes), sharpening a needle is often the way to go. The stones on the machine are set to turn with the treadle similar to a bobbin winder.

For hand-sewing needles, I use the little emery "strawberry" on the pin cushion.

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Sparafucile 18 years ago

I certainly haven't, but I do know that in couture workshops where they would, the "hands" use a little strawberry-shaped thing filled with very, very fine emery *powder*, and push their needles into it regularly to sharpen them...

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RedDog 18 years ago

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