Making Medieval Bronze Needles

Lord Francis Bean

This is the “basic” needle-making class, wherein we work from pre-drawn bronze or
brass wire. A more advanced class may deal with drawing wire, forging iron wire,
making copper-alloy wire from raw materials, and/or iron and steel needles.
A few period needles

Figure 1. Period needles taken from the Coppergate finds at York [1]; the four leftmost and the third
from the right are iron; the rest are copper alloy. Scale is 1:1. Our focus in this class is on copper alloy
needles. The two rightmost approximate our goal most closely, although we will be working smaller.

Copper alloy needles were believed to be for coarser work and were usually larger than
the iron needles. Fine domestic sewing would usually have been done with the smaller
iron needle. Because iron corrodes more readily than copper, and because iron needles
were often smaller, iron needles are a rare find. Iron needles with intact eyes are even
rarer.

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Period Practice

Figure 2. Picture from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nadler-1568.png (CC license) The

Nadler (needle-maker) at work. Note the very narrow anvil in use.

Ottaway [1] gives the following procedure for making needles.

Iron needle heads were made in one of two ways. In the first the head was flattened and
the eye was punched through it. As can be seen on [Fig 3]., this could be a two-stage
process with a preliminary indentation made by a punch with a wedge-shaped tip.
Alternatively, the head was formed by flattening the end of the strip and splitting it with a
small chisel. The bifurcated ends were then splayed out and the ends closed and welded
to form the eye. Punching usually results in a round eye while the second method of head
manufacture results in an elongated lentoid eye. In Anglo-Scandinavian contexts 65% of
needles had punched eyes and 35% had eyes made in the second way.
Figure 3. Needle showing 2-step eye manufacture. This needle was of forged iron wire; note the square
cross-section consistent with forged wire. Drawn wire is usually round.

We are interested in the first procedure, as illustrated. (The second procedure, with
welded eyes, is much more complicated and not recommended for the novice metal-
worker.) Ottaway’s procedure was claimed for iron needles, but the process can be
adapted to copper alloys. As some copper-alloy needles show evidence of the same
procedure, we will adapt our general procedure from Ottaway, and will proceed from
drawn copper-alloy wire.
Not all copper-alloy needles had this small, round eye. Some copper-alloy needles show
evidence of having multiple punched round eyes joined together by cutting the
intervening web of metal. I have dabbled in this but have found that it is difficult to get a
smooth lentoid eye in this manner. The intervening web tends to leave sharp edges that
can snag fabric or cut thread.
Some of the finer needles even had multiple eyes punched and left unconnected; the
hypothesis is that thread was looped through multiple eyes for a friction hold. [2]
Beaudry [2] gives the following procedure for making copper-alloy needles. While she
asserts that all pre-17th c. copper-alloy needles were made this way, I do not agree.
Period specimens from Coppergate have both a chiseled groove and a lack of evidence of
guttering. The rest of her process makes sense if we assume that the sharper punch is
actually a drift, as we’ll use, and it fills in some of the gloss from Ottaway.
Before the seventeenth century, copper-alloy needles were made individually by a
local craftsman. The process consisted of cutting a piece of copper-alloy wire to
the desired length, flattening the eye end on an anvil with a small hammer,
forming the eye by striking the flattened part with a punch on the anvil, then
clearing the hole with a sharper punch on a lead cake. Next, the wire was
gripped in a pair of grooved pliers while the point was formed and the head
trimmed and smoothed with files. A guttering iron was used to file a groove
around the eye on both sides, to accommodate the thickness of thread.

Methods and Materials

For this class, we’ll work from pre-drawn brass and bronze wire using a set of custom-
made tools. The techniques are similar for punched iron, but require hot work not easily
done in a large class setting. Steel needles are similar to but more difficult than iron, and
involve a heat treatment different from bronze.
Tools
• (Small) Chisel • Light hammer
• (Small) Punch • Angle iron (in lieu of anvil)
• (Small) Drift • File
• (Small) Tin cake • Emery bag
• Rolling plate • Masking tape
Our procedure is summarized as follows:
1. Flatten the end of the wire using hammer and anvil
2. Chisel a channel into the flattened end
3. Punch the eyehole in the middle of the channel
4. Smooth and enlarge the eyehole using the drift and tin cake
5. Hammer and/or file the eye to desired shape, cut to length
6. Sharpen using file
7. (Optional) Heat treat for hardness (bronze only)
8. Straighten and work-harden by rolling between the plates
9. Polish and smooth needle using emery bag
The period procedure would have been very similar. First, the forming of the eye would
probably have been exactly as we will do in this class, with the sole substitution of lead
for the tin cake.
[2] suggests that the needles were sharpened using a (water, air, or apprentice) powered
grinding wheel. In my own naddling, I used a fine belt on a belt grinder with a contact
wheel – aside from being electrically powered, faster, and using a finer grade of abrasive,
this would be exactly equivalent to the period choice. Unfortunately, the grinder is not
easily portable, so we’re going to use files. Files are slow, but they ensure a proper taper
on the point. Those who wish can take needles home without points to finish them on
power tools, where available. A dremel works well.
Detailed Procedure
Pick your choice of material, brass or bronze, and your wire size. Brass is an alloy of
copper and zinc, and is slightly stiffer than bronze. Bronze was an alloy of copper and
tin, and was somewhat more common. Both were period, although a more likely choice
would have been a ternary alloy of copper, zinc, and tin. The term for a generic copper
alloy including zinc, tin, arsenic, and/or lead is latten, and each alloy has distinct
properties.
Select your wire size. Most period copper-alloy needles were at and well beyond the
extreme large end of the range we have available, and larger wire is much easier to work.
The thinnest wire we have available (0.024") is about the same as the thinnest needles
from York in the 10th-14th centuries. Be aware that thinner needles in copper alloys will
bend during use. These are not modern stainless steel!
1. Flatten the end of the wire. Start with your whole length of wire – if you make a
mistake it is easier to cut off the end and continue than to throw away a needle-
length. I find that it is best to tape the wire down to the anvil to keep it from
moving. All that is really needed is a flat head area in which to work with chisel,
punch and drift. Overflattening will make punching easier but weaken the eye;
pick your poison.
2. Chisel the channel. With the wire still taped down, center the chisel as best you
can lengthwise along the flattened area. This is very tricky and it helps to be a bit
near-sighted. An off-center channel is OK so long as it doesn’t wander all the
way to the side of the flat. Once centered, tap the chisel smartly with the hammer.
You want a definite groove, but you don’t want to cut the flat all the way through.
If your first cut is too shallow, it is easy to find the groove with the chisel edge to
deepen it.
3. Punch the eyehole. Punching is a much misunderstood art by many non-
metalworkers. A proper punch is not sharpened to a point, but has a flat tip with
sharp corners. (Consider a paper punch.) The goal is to remove a plug of metal,
not to shove metal around. If you examine your tools, the punch is the one with
the flat tip; the drift has a sharper point.
Center the punch at the middle of the groove and strike it smartly. Your first
punch should go about halfway through, leaving a faint but visible dimple on the
backside. Flip the wire and center the punch on the dimple. You want to push the
same metal back to the other side. Alternate sides. Eventually (4-5 strikes) the
plug will start to tear loose and fall out. Once it’s close to coming out, sometimes
it’s easier to poke it out by hand with the sharper drift.
With hot punching, the plug tears out because the steel around the plug cools and
stiffens. Working cold, the metal actually work-hardens so that subsequent
strikes break the plug loose.
4. Drift the eye. The hole you have is both sharp-edged, small, and probably a bit
misshapen. Place the eye on the tin slug and fit the drift into it. Pound the drift
into the tin slug, twist it loose, flip the wire, and drift from the other side. You
can enlarge your eye to taste, but remember that the edges are getting brittle. If
you want to severely stretch it, you will need to heat the eye and let it cool to
remove the work-hardening.
5. Hammer and file eye to shape. The stub end of the wire is probably rather sharp,
and the sides of the eye may bulge far enough to make sewing difficult. If the
sides of the eye are thick enough to permit it, file them to some semblance of
straight. If they are too thin, very lightly hammer them into true against the anvil.
Both operations can tear out your eye, so be careful, and don’t cut to length until
the eye is right. Once the eye is trued, cut the needle to length with the chisel.
File the stub end to match the period examples.
 6. Sharpen. Period sharpening probably used a powered stone. We don’t have this
for our class, so we’ll use files. For a slim needle, this isn’t so difficult. Hold the
needle by the eye with the point on the anvil. Stroke the file away from the eye
and toward the point. Rotate the needle every few strokes to keep the shaft
reasonably round. Check the point periodically, as it will tend to get out of round.
Note: a needle point and a pin point are shaped very differently. The needle point
tapers gradually, while a pin point is much more abrupt. Shortcuts now will make
sewing more difficult later. One might even say, a stitch in time, saves nine…
7. Optional: heat treat bronze needles. Unlike brass, bronze can be heat-treated to
harden it somewhat. We won’t do this in the class, but it’s something you can try
on your own if you want. The metallurgy is complicated, but the concept is
simple. You want to heat the needle to 700-900° F and hold it there for an
appreciable amount of time, then cool to room temperature quickly. For those
who wish to try this, the easiest way seems to be to heat a piece of grooved iron in
a forge to a low forging temperature. Pull the iron from the forge and drop the
needles into the groove. Watch the iron as it cools; when it reaches a dull red,
dump the needles directly into water. The hardening effect is definitely
noticeable, but not profound.
8. Straighten and work-harden. Both bronze and brass are fairly soft metals. Heat-
treating bronze can help, but work-hardening has a greater effect (and
complements the heat-treatment in bronze). To make life easier, we can both
work-harden and straighten in one easy operation. Place the needle on a flat plate
(the angle-iron works fine) with the eye overhanging the edge. Press the small
metal plate on top and roll the needle firmly and briskly. This will straighten a
bent needle immediately. Keep rolling for a while and it will also work-harden
the needle.
9. Polish. The file leaves a rough surface that will make sewing difficult. (So do
other sharpening methods, although files are probably worse.) Stick your needle
into your emery bag repeatedly to smooth the rough spots. Sewing smoothness is
reached surprisingly quickly, as only the roughest spots cause major difficulty.
You can also polish a needle with fine sandpaper, but sandpaper is not period.
(It’s also a good way to stick yourself repeatedly!) Finely-ground pumice is a
period abrasive, and would probably have been the abrasive of choice. I have no
evidence that emery bags were used for the purpose, but they are readily available
to us today.

Bibliography
[1] Ottaway, Patrick; Rogers, Nicola. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Finds from Medieval York.
[2] Beaudry, Mary. Findings: the material culture of needlework and sewing.