In need of Tips and Techniques for making Eyebolts

[j21896]

Does anyone have any good tips, tricks, jigs or techniques for making eyebolts?

 

I’ve never worked with wire, and need to make some eyebolts with an internal diameter of about 1/32 of an inch (2 inches to scale).

 

I saw some jewelry eye pin making tools on-line, but they all seem to be limited to larger diameters, and just fiddling around with needle nose pliers hasn’t yielded much success.

 

Thanks,

Robert

[demonborger]

Have you tried coiling it around a brass rod of desired diameter, then cutting the coil and soldering the two parts together?

Personally I just bought some eyelets online, not too expensive, big time saver.

[popeye2sea]

I bought a set of round nose ultra fine pliers from a company online called Micro-Tools (part # PLR-491-10).

I then ground one tip down to 1 mm, which is just over 1/32 inch.  The grinding down was really just an increased taper and I tried to preserve the mating surface of the plier jaws.

 

The best way to form the loop is to grasp the wire between the jaws of the pliers in your right hand, the jaw that you are going to loop around (smaller jaw) away from you and the wire gripped so that it is at the very end.  You do not want to able to feel the wire above the plier tip. You also want to make sure the the wire is perpendicular to the pliers or you will get an oval.  Using the thumb of your left hand bend the wire around the small jaw of the pliers.  Your thumb should be right up to the pliers and it is more of a pushing the wire around the jaw.  You will need to turn the pliers in your right hand by turning your wrist without losing your grip on the wire.  You may reach a point where you can not bend any further comfortably without losing your grip. You can adjust the the grip of the pliers so that the point at which they are gripping is further back along the loop by just turning the jaw slightly in the loop.  This will allow you to finish closing the loop.  Be careful not to move the wire up or down the jaws while doing this or you will get two different diameter bends in the loop.

 

Once the loop is made shift your grip on the wire by spinning the pliers in the loop until you are now gripping the straight section opposite the end of the loop.  Bend the wire slightly in the opposite direction until you get the shaft of the eyebolt pointed in the right direction.

 

I use the same pliers for making rings for ring bolts and hooks for blocks.  The hooks are made with five separate bends in the wire, but the principles are the same.  It is important that you keep the wire perpendicular or your bends are going to be out of plane and at odd angles.  Remember that you are not bending the wire with the pliers so much as you are bending the wire around the jaw.  You will have a lot more control over how the bends look if you are doing all the bending with your hand and not the pliers.

 

Regards,

Edited November 14, 2013 by popeye2sea

[BareHook]

See attached link for a practicum on making eyebolts and hooks. The eyebolts just won't have the last bend.

 

http://www.modelboatyard.com/hooks.html

[j21896]

Thanks very much folks!

 

Robert

[Chuck]

Depending on what they need to be used for.....you can take some thin gauge wire and fold it in half around a drill bit the correct diameter.  Then twist the two tail ends together many times which will tighten up the eye and make a screw-like pin.   Slip it off the bit when you are done.  The screw like tail will really hold when glued into a pre-drilled hole.  There will not be any chance you could easily remove it.  If you use stell wire you can get really thin stuff and make eyebolts with crazy small eyes.  No monkeying around with pliers needed.

 

Chuck

[capnharv2]

Chuck,

 

You beat me to it. Those are the only eyebolts I make/use now. And they look so much better than the ones that come with kits.

 

Thanks,

 

Harvey

[grsjax]

Depending on what they need to be used for.....you can take some thin gauge wire and fold it in half around a drill bit the correct diameter.  Then twist the two tail ends together many times which will tighten up the eye and make a screw-like pin.   Slip it off the bit when you are done.  The screw like tail will really hold when glued into a pre-drilled hole.  There will not be any chance you could easily remove it.  If you use stell wire you can get really thin stuff and make eyebolts with crazy small eyes.  No monkeying around with pliers needed.

 

Chuck

 

Hi

Just a small mod this this method.  When you twist the tails use a small piece of tubing just large enough to insert the ends of the wire in.  Insert the tails into the tube and hold the ends with pliers.  Turn the drill or whatever you are using to form the eye.  This results in a very tight twist.

[WackoWolf]

The link that BareHook posted has other stuff in there that can be of help like Blacking Brass. Very good link. Thank you

[Ulises Victoria]

It may be too late, but take a look at this thread.

 

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/4490-a-video-about-making-metal-hooks-and/

[molasses]

I used the technique described by Chuck to make some ring bolts. I twisted 40 gauge (.0055 inch / 0.14mm) copper wire around .010 inch (0.25mm) piano wire to make the eye bolt. [is that "crazy small" enough for you, Chuck?] I made rings .030 inch (0.75mm) inside diameter, fished the ring into the eye, brought the ends into contact and glued them with ca transferred on the point of a needle. Here's a completed ring bolt. I made a total of twenty of them and, yes, they were very fiddly. 

 

Edited December 3, 2013 by DFellingham

[BareHook]

After working on the rigging portion of my first ever kit, I will be using the twisted screw style eyebolts in all locations where rigging attachment is required, the strait shaft just pulls out too easily. The strait shaft style is fine the non-functioning deck and hatch bolts, but its a real bummer when you're trying to tension a rigging line and the bolt pulls-out.

 

Ken

[Modeler12]

Great job Fillingham.

 

The picture is worth . . . .

Then when you consider that wire .0055 inch diameter translate to less than half an inch when you scale 1:76, that is very good.

Likewise an eye diameter of .030 inch becomes 2.25 inch.

 

My point is that scaling eye bolts is usually ignored when making them (except for you). The same applies to hooks!!!

 

The eye bolts I have been practicing on are all too big!!! I have steel wire .010 inch and I will use it (despite the scaling factor).

[Sailor1234567890]

That is a small eye right there. WOW. Impressive.

[src]

Depending on what they need to be used for.....you can take some thin gauge wire and fold it in half around a drill bit the correct diameter.  Then twist the two tail ends together many times which will tighten up the eye and make a screw-like pin.   Slip it off the bit when you are done.  The screw like tail will really hold when glued into a pre-drilled hole.  There will not be any chance you could easily remove it.  If you use stell wire you can get really thin stuff and make eyebolts with crazy small eyes.  No monkeying around with pliers needed.

 

Chuck

I dont know if I can approve of this method; where is the fiddly-ness, the cussing and gnashing of teeth. The hours of making eye bolts cut by better than 50%? What do I tell the better half when its time to clean house? "Gee honey, I have plenty of time for that, Chuck showed me a faster way to do something...." Thanks Chuck.....

Kidding of course, this is great, I have better than 100 eye bolts to make at 1.25" (0.023 @ 1:51) I was seeing days of work ahead of me, now maybe I can do them all today. Thanks Chuck!

 

Sam 

[druxey]

If you are considering using needle nose pliers, get really high-grade ones. I struggled for years with an inferior pair. Now I use a beautiful but expensive pair made in Sweden by Teborg. Sweet!

[src]

Those are some nice looking pliers Druxey. In the long run if you never have to buy another pair, they really are not all that expensive; you get what you pay for. Another good brand in Lindstrom.  

Sam

[michael mott]

Druxey is right regarding the pliers, you really do get what you pay for. The Swiss watchmaking and jewelry tools are superb.

 

Michael

[guillemot]

Just my tuppence worth of variance - Working at 1/96th, I need some seriously small eyebolts. I use the twist method with a tin pin, or here, a fine brass tube,bent into a hook. This is inserted in a pin vice - it's in my Archimedes drill because my smallest pin vice was hiding in the chaos that is my desk... The other ends are gripped in a pliers or my old fly-tying vice and the pin vice is given a spin, resulting in a really tight wound, tiny eyebolt. Keep winding and the twist usually snaps off at the pliers.

Edited March 19, 2014 by guillemot

[shipman]

Copper wire in thin sections for ring/eye bolts will pull out of shape under the slightest tension in my experience.

As for twisting the 'tails' of the eye-bolts, I use lock-wire pliers.

[Ulises Victoria]

This is the method I developed many years ago.

The twisted part adds some strength to the joint

[BANYAN]

I use this method also - picked the tip up here on MSW

 

cheers

 

Pat

[shipman]

Hi Pat.

Rarely is anything new. I picked the method up over 20 years ago, so long, I forget where. It's worthwhile shedding new light on old techniques as there are new members who find things new to them.

It's winter and I have a good trawl through the forums to see what I've missed. This contribution was a response to help someone asking about painting chain. It appears I had a bit of brain lag, as I find this page isn't the one I was responding to. Doh!

[Ulises Victoria]

Just a clarification: I said I developed this method because I did not copied it from anyone/anywhere else. One day I was thinking about how to make eyebolts easier and this came up to my mind. No doubt somebody else had came with the same idea. I don't want to take undue credit!

Edited December 2, 2019 by Ulises Victoria

[shipman]

Remembered where I found it.....Donald McNarry.

[Retired guy]

Make my eye bolts like this use .016" brass round, also do use .020" or .032" if required

 

I use Lindstrom round pliers come from Spain 

 

 

First I bend around the end for very small eye bolts

 

 

Next I snip the flat part off using Lindstrom smallest cutters

 

 

 

Then I go back to the round pliers and bend all around until it touches the wire

 

 

Then I will bend the opposite side approx 45 deg 

 

 

 

After that use flat pliers to squash it very carefully to make it round, some times I solder them

 

 

Hope this helps

 

 

Regards

Richard