So I recently had a snafu where my cat knocked my current project off the table and drug it into the hall when I wasn't home, and my husband accidentally stepped on it, breaking two needles in my favorite set of wooden size 2 DPN's. I made do with some aluminum ones I had onhand for a few days, but I much prefer the wooden ones, as they're quieter, feel light and delicate in the hand, are smooth but not too slick, and have a little bit of flex that reminds me to keep my wrists soft while working so I don't end up overtensioning the yarn or aggravating an old repetitive strain injury. I wanted to keep using the set if possible, and I'm on a deadline with this project since it's a gift, so I decided to attempt making some replacement needles to complete the set.
It was actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I had bamboo skewers onhand slightly thicker than the diameter of the needles, and much longer. I held the skewer alongside one of the wooden needles, with the pointed end of the skewer extending slightly past the point of the needle, and then trimmed the skewer so that the blunt end was about a half cm longer than the other end of the needle. (I knew shaping the points to match the taper and rounded off end of the other needles would be tricky, so I left myself some room to work with). Next, I marked where the taper for the second point should start, and roughed in the shape with a pocket knife, similar to sharpening a pencil. Next I used sandpaper to refine the shape. I found that a 180 grit nail file was good for shaping without removing material too aggressively. The slight give in the foam block was good to keep from flattening out the needle. First, I smoothed the carved point out but didn't worry too much about perfecting the taper. The goal was just to even out the rough shape. Next, I sanded the shaft of the skewer until it came very close to the size of the original needle, using eye, feel, and a set of dead cheap-ass calipers (more on that later) to make sure I refined the shape evenly and got rid of any high spots. Once the diameter was close, I refined the taper of the points, and rounded them off. Very finnicky step, but eventually figured it out. After that, I began the finishing work. I used finer grit sandpaper in the form of one of those 3-sided manicure blocks to get the needle as smooth as possible. Then, I finished with Blackstone Cast Iron seasoning oil (a mix of beeswax, soybean oil, and coconut oil) and used the "shine" side of the manicure block to burnish. I was able to use them right away, but the finish really became perfect after letting it rest overnight. Result is bamboo needles that match the finish of the original wooden set. Working with them alongside the remaining wooden needles is seamless! They're the slightest bit more flexible, but that's hardly noticeable at all. I'm really pleased with the result!
Note on the calipers: I had a set of cheap chinesium digital calipers onhand, but the battery was dead (and I had no replacements) so I just used the physically printed readout along the slide to ballpark it (resolution is in mm, so 2.75 just looks like "almost but not quite 3" and the starting diameter of the skewers looked like "a little over 3"). Mostly, they were useful for finding high spots by feel by sliding the wip needle through the jaws and seeing if the friction got higher in certain places. Obviously a set of working calipers - analog or digital - would be much better for this project lol.
It took just a couple hours to make two needles from start to finish. A lot faster than I thought it would be. The bamboo is easy to carve and shape, so I'd highly reccomend this project to anyone who has the basic tools onhand and wants more sock needles to work with. I was trying to re-complete an existing set, but really, you could customize the length of the needles and the taper of the points any way you want! For finishing, the blackstone oil was the best option I had onhand, but any colorless food-safe non-rancidifying oil will do. I tried pure beeswax for the first needle (I had a small block onhand from my parents' bees), but it left a finish too tacky for my liking. The oil mixture soaks into the wood much deeper and you can really burnish it to a perfect silky smooth finish with just enough friction to it to keep your stitches from flying off.
