huge clothes pin

[John Borgwardt]

Hello All. I was wondering if anyone out there would have plans for making a huge clothes pin? :confused: ( 3/4"x4" ) About. I am more interested in seeing how to make the metal part. Everyone is so good at solving problems like this. ;) Thanks in advance for your time. Merry Christmas. John :p

[Greg Cuetara]

John not sure if this would work but could you take a clothes hanger and straighten it out then bend it around a dowel with two ends that stick out....just follow a regular clothes pin and scale up the size to what you need....maybe a clothes hanger would be too soft a metal....but it might be worth a try and would be very cheap.
Good Luck,
Greg

[Jamie Buxton]

There are many styles of clothes pin. One of them doesn't have any metal parts at all. It is kinda like a cleft stick. Go here to see one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothespin You could make these of any size you want.

[Keith Outten]

John,

Bending a metal rod about 3/16" in diameter could be done by hand if you build a jig. You would need a large diameter steel rod or pipe that is fairly long and attach it to the floor and to something else at the top. Welding a large rod toward the bottom perpendicular to the main shaft would give you something to attach one end of the 3/16" rod and hold it still while you start wrapping the small rod around the shaft. You could make a tool to help with the wrapping part if you felt it was necessary but a long length of 3/16" rod would be easy to bend around the shaft by hand.

If you could find an old set of clothesline poles you could attach the starting leg to the top "T" with clamps and bend the spiral downward around the base of the pole. Once the spiral was bent you could bend the remaining 90's using a bench vise.
.

[John Borgwardt]

Thanks to all. I knew you would come through. Happy holidays. John

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Don't mean to sound daft - - but - - -Why make a huge cloths pin?
And why bother with the spring? Why not an old school one?

[Eddie Darby]

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=32012&cat=1,43456,43407

Might help.