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A needle you can thread with your eyes closed
Guest post by Scott Christensen.
What invention could be more straightforward than a needle? Maybe a hammer (stick with a rock attached) or a knife (sharp rock or bone). Ancient tools get a long time to evolve during which they generally improve and bugs work themselves out. Gimmicks get adopted and abandoned. Forms become simpler.
The common hand sewing needle would seem to be fully evolved from the thorn or fish bone that it started as. But one bug remains. Older eyes have difficulty seeing well enough to thread a needle. Cave men and women never lived to be old enough to have this problem. But Pam Turner did. The first time inventor from Minnesota had secretly laughed when her mother had trouble threading a needle in her middle years. But when she found herself struggling with same problem, she did that cool thing inventors do; she asked why. And she fixed it. After millennia of existence as a pokey thing with a hole in it, the hand sewing needle has now evolved into a pokey thing with an ingenious thread-by-feel side-opening slot.
Ms. Turner's operation is totally home-grown DIY invention. She began prototyping and sharpening all the needles herself. She buys machine time by the hour from a shop that has theprecision equipment to cut the unique slot that makes theneedlework.
The Spiral Eye side threading needlesI ordered arrived in the mail a couple days after ordering them online from the inventors website. They're small, so the packaging is minimal: a greeting card. Each needle is pushed into a small felt dot stuck to a business card which is slipped into a small plastic sleeve inside the card.She designed all this herself, though she considers herself an inventor more than a designer. (The website could use some help.)
So do they work? Yes. It's a really neat little trick. After one try I had the hang of the technique: Loop the thread over the needle. Slide toward the eye till you feel it catch. Pull into the slot. Then pull toward the end. Presto!
I initially thought the price would be her major challenge to solve. The needles are relatively expensive ($5-8 each) compared to the $2-for-20, chinese type we commonly see, but Pam explained to me that before mass production made them almost too cheap to meter, needles were prized tools not unlike woodworking hand tools. A stitcher might have one or two and take good care of them, sharpening them when needed, and keeping them in a case to avoid damage or loss.And many other kinds of specialty needles are similarly priced.
She is talking with some interested producers of surgical needles. Already she has sold quite few to doctors, who find it useful to be able to clip onto the middle of a thread during stitching, which is impossible with a conventional needle. This is one reason they are made of surgical stainless steel rather than nickel plated. This matters to surgeons and to people with sensitivity to nickel. And if it makes you feel better about the investment, Pam says they are the only needles made in the USA.
Check out the USPTO's new e-newsletter for the independent inventor community where I found this story.
And maybe this longish (14min) video about the many steps involved in making quality English sewing needles.
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They are absolutely fabulous!
I really love the look. Sharp, smart, sophisticated, if a little fashion forward(nothing wrong with that), something I would wear .
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http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?individual_id=268365&portfolio_id=3437843&
http://www.goldviolin.com/Self_Threading_Needles_p/gt065.htm
or the Schmetz handicap side loading sewing machine needle
http://www.thecolorfulworldofsewing.com/p-229-schmetz-self-threading-needles.aspx
There are over a hundred patents in this area. But Ms Turner's idea is a good design and may find customers before the last person on earth forgets how to sew....
I assume they're wire EDMing the thread labyrinth...
I wish her all success and will be spreading the word...
"Pam says they are the only needles made in the USA."
This is another astonishing quote, and a perfect example of why our country is in its current dire state. Exporting labor intensive products to low labor cost countries makes sense, but something like needle manufacturing must be a virtually labor free process. Why not make them here?
The only reason to import them is that when you're retailing them for $0.10 each, your margins are so slim that saving fractions of a cent can make the difference between a loss and a small profit.
But who decided that the "right" price for a sewing needle is $0.10? If they cost $0.20 each (a 100% increase!), would anyone even notice? Would sales drop? I doubt it. The Walmart mentality (prices must constantly go down until supplier profit reaches zero) that has infected our retail infrastructure has had such a corrosive effect on our economy. It is responsible for a large part of the pain we're in now.
Anyway, kudos Pam. Very well done.