Somewhere in the archives of this group is a detailed description of my needle making. I think there is also something on my blog -
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started making wooden needles because I wanted to understand how tip shapeaffected my knitting - Why buy commercial needles if you are just grind theheck out them? Wooden dowel is cheap and easy to find - unfortunately thekinds of woods that are used for cheap dowel these days do not make
*great*knitting needles. However, with a pen knife and a bit of sand paper, veryfunctional knitting needles can be made. (Once you have learned thetechnique, you can get more suitable woods and make some really fineknitting needles. (And, once you have confidence, you can buy a set ofcommercial wooden or bamboo needles and use them as blanks to make needlesthat really suit your knitting style and that really work with the yarnsthat you like.) I harvest dogwood twigs in the spring, split them, whittlethem to shape, and make fine knitting DPN with a minimal investment in timeand materials. I feel that those dogwood needles are as good as the best(or most expensive) commercial wooden needles. I believe that dogwood isthe very best wood for knitting needles. This puts me in the minority as
*rosewood* is the official religion in this group. I am interested in traditional knitting methods that used long steel needles. Such long steel needles did not seem to be commercially available. After some experimentation, I settled on using a small, electric bench grinder to form the tips by rotating commercial "music rod" against the grinding wheel with my screw gun. Music rod or piano wire is available inexpensively in most hardware stores. This process produces a DPN blank. These were tools that I felt many "handy" households were likely to own and which produced a good needle. The blank is then hand polished with emery paper and crocus cloth. The result are quite satisfactory for using with a knitting sheath to produce traditional fisherman's ganseys such as described in Gladys Thompson's and Mary Thomas's books. The needles are 2 to 3 mm in diameter and 12 to 18 inches long. My handmade needles have a much lower level of polish than the commercial cast and plated needles that are available in 10 inch lengths. Thus, my needles are less slippery and I find them easier to use. Also, 10 inch needles are also much harder to join with without twisting when you are working with cast-ons of more than 220 stitches.
Knitting with a knitting sheath allows much faster knitting than knitting with SPN or cable needles. Knitting with a knitting sheath and spring steel needles uses the spring of the needle to perform half of the knitting motion, reducing joint rotation and stress on the hand and wrists. The sheath frees the right hand to focus on tension control, and supports the work. Knitting with a knitting sheath and long steel needles has dramatically improved the quality of my knitting, increased the speed of my knitting, and reduced the stress on my hands and wrists.
On the other hand, knitting in the round with long DPN is very dangerous. These are the knitting needles that your mother warned you about. When knitting in the round, long sharp needles poke out from your lap - you do not want a child running up to you while you are knitting with long DPN. One needle is poking up just below the knitter's eye level. Bend over to look more closely at your knitting and you could get a knitting needle in the eye - wear eye protection when knitting in the round with long DPN. Moreover, long DPN can poke and scratch furniture.
Aaron "lanfear32" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Cool! How do you make your own needls? What tools do you use, and
> what made you decide to do that in the first place?
>
> snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote:
> > What size is that needle? Hard to tell.
> >
> > I really do not care. I knit swatches with different sized needles and then
> > use the needles that produced the fabric that I liked. If you want to do
> > better, get a micrometer and measure the actual diameter of your needles.
> > The traditional needle gauges with holes in them make errors in needle
> > naming easy.
> >
> > Consider US # 1 needles. The holes in the "Boye" standard knitting needle
> > gauge and the "Susan Bates Knit Checker" have holes for that are just larger
> > than 2.50 mm in diameter so that the Boye and Susan Bates # 1 needles are
> > just under 2.50 mm in diameter and *just* fit in that gauge hole. However,
> > in the Knitter's Companion, there is a cardboard needle gauge that the hole
> > for #1 that is 2.25 mm in diameter, but the text in Knitter's Companion says
> > that US #1 is the same as 2 mm?!! Then, when I look at the needle size chart
> > in Mary Thomas/ Dover reprint, the diameter of the spots she provides in her
> > needle size chart do not match up with the diameters given in the text.
> > Moreover, my AddiTurbo needle sold to me as a US #1 is about 2.51 mm in
> > diameter, thus does not fit in the gauge holes for #1 needles. It is hard
> > to tell that it is just a little bit over and so and it must be a # 2?? : ) > >
> > Skipping to the chase here.
> >
> > Measuring my Susan Bates Knit Check (aluminum knitting needle gauge), the
> > sizes of the holes are as follows:
> > 1 -> 2.50 mm
> > 0 -> 2.25 mm
> > 00 -> 1.85 mm
> > 000 -> 1.50 mm
> >
> > However, the sizes of the handmade steel needles that I use are: > > 1 -> 2.32 mm
> > 0 -> 2.00 mm
> > 00 -> 1.65 mm
> > 000 -> 1.20 mm
> > Which is about what you will get if you make your own steel needles from
> > music rod available in the American market. However, precise metric sized
> > spring steel rod is available on the world market.
> >
> > Of course, you could make those size needles and rename them After all,
> > what I call a #1 is only 0.07 mm larger than SB's "0" but 0.18 mm smaller
> > than what SB calls #1, so by actual size it is much closer to being a "0"
> > than a "1". But, it fits in the "1" hole and not the '0" hole, so for me,
> > for now, it remains a "1". This why I say that hole based gauges introduce
> > real errors in needle naming.
> >
> > The really bad news is that last night, I did gauge swatches on the cashmere
> > yarn that has been sitting like a lump in the middle of the stash, and this
> > morning at the breakfast table my wife said that the swatch from the 1.2 mm
> > needles is the best fabric. It is a lovely fabric, but that is a lot of
> > knitting. Maybe she would like matching hat and gloves rather than a > > sweater. > >
> > Aaron
>