Inspired by this Instagram post by Sarah Guerin and getting down to my last two large wire bristles from @customboots, I decided to go ahead and get set up to make my own bent-wire bristles.
Here’s what I learned.
My Supplies
- D’Addario PL013-5 pack of guitar strings 0.013"/0.33mm diameter, high-carbon steel
- Osborne cobbler’s pincers as wire cutters
- small tub of Nokorode paste flux from the plumbing section of ACE Hardware
- Forney #61489 lead-free (tin, copper, and silver) solder
- Weller D550PK soldering gun
Note: The price on Weller’s own page for this is much higher than you’ll find online. Don’t pay that much. Or even use a soldering gun. See note below. - small scrap of 2x4 lumber as sacrificial work surface
- refrigerator magnets to keep finished and unfinished bristles together
- pliers for bending wire
- ventilation for soldering fumes
- relatively fine sandpaper or emery paper
There is nothing magical about any of these brands or specific choices. If you’re comfortable with leaded solder, that’s fine. Rosin-core leaded is way more available. Any soldering iron or gun capable of melting the solder you have is likely fine. Spooled wire would also be fine, and probably cost less per length, as would slightly different diameters. But I’d avoid galvanized or otherwise coated wires, and generally stick with plain steel, rather than stainless or another metal.
With guitar strings, make sure you’re getting a specialty pack that’s all plain-wire, unwound strings of the same diameter. Guitar strings are more commonly sold in sets with different diameters, some of which are wound, for each of the six strings of a guitar, low to high.
My Process
I’ll write this out as instructions, but don’t take my word as any kind of gospel truth. I’m sure this process can be improved, too, and I’d love to read messages about how.
Cut
Cut the guitar strings into segments, then stick them to one of your fridge magnets.
I copied the 11 centimeter finished length of the “large” wire bristles from @customboots, so my lengths of wire were 22cm each. I made smaller bristles from the leftover lengths from each guitar string.
Edit: With the benefit of later experience, I’d recommend cutting bristles longer, perhaps 6" bent from 12" lengths. I have larger hands, but even for those who don’t, it pays to have enough length to fill the whole closed palm of the hand, for pulling through.
It helps to hold the ends of the strings to be cut down somehow, so they don’t go skittering away when snapped off.
Bend
Bend the lengths roughly in half in your hands, to roughly 45-degree angles. You can do this a few segments at a time. Bring the ends together to find the rough middle on the other end, then crimp with your fingers. Just starting the bend is enough at this stage.
There’s no need to try to get the lengths bent exactly in half, either. You’re going to trim the tips in the end, anyway. That will take care of any length difference across sides.
Finish bending the wires by crimping them in the jaws of a set of pliers. Fit each side of wire into a notch in one of the jaws of the pliers, then slowly close the pliers, twisting the wire with your fingers to try to keep perpendicular to the jaws of the pliers.
This is a little fiddly and takes some decent eyesight. But I did find it getting easier as I went along.
Ideally, bend each bristle-to-be so that the tips run parallel and stay that way when you set it down. This is very hard to do. Second best is bending so that the ends cross near the tips, or closer to the tips than to the eye. You’ll get a chance to spread the ends apart so they’re parallel later.
Prep Station
It’s a lot easier to melt a puddle of solder and pull bristles through it than feed solder onto the bristles. Move the work—the bristles—not the tools.
Start your soldering gun or iron and get the tip hot enough to melt solder. Feed a good amount into the tip, holding it just above the work surface. Then set the solder down on your (sacrificial) work surface and put your gun or iron down.
Open your paste flux. Using a stick or an acid brush, make a little mound of paste within the container that sticks up a bit from the top of the container. You’re going to draw your bristles through that, too.
Set your second fridge magnet far enough away from your unfinished bristles so they don’t stick to each other if you bump them around.
Solder
For each bristle:
-
Pull the bristle off the magnet, grasping the loose ends with the fingers of your dominant hand.
-
Roll the wire in your hand so the ends run parallel, either touching or very close together, especially near the eye.
This is your chance to correct any wires that bent too far earlier.
-
Slide the bristle over your mound of paste flux from near your fingers at the tips to about a centimeter from the bent end that will make the eye.
You don’t need or want visible blobs of paste flux on your bristle. It’s fine if you get them—they’ll burn off and just make more smoke—but a light surface coating is enough to burn off the oxides and let your solder bond.
-
Pick up your soldering iron or gun with your non-dominant hand and melt the solder puddle.
-
Draw your bristle through the solder puddle, starting near your fingers and continuing to about a centimeter from the bend.
You can do this relatively quickly. Smooth, continuous drawing motions tend to leave fewer solder blobs on the wires.
-
Blow fumes from the solder and flux toward your ventilation.
-
Set the bristle down and pick it up again, this time from the bent eye.
-
Run the bristle through the solder puddle again, melting any blobs you may have made on your first pass and continuing all the way to the tips.
-
Wave the bristle in the air to cool it.
-
Stick the bristle to the other fridge magnet.
Finish
Clip the tips of the bristles off cleanly. You can:
- clip the ends of square, creating a blunt tip
- clip the ends off at an angle, creating a blade-like angle
- clip the ends off twice at opposite angles, creating a diamond-shaped point
Bend a rectangle of sandpaper or emery paper in half, like a patch of leather for burnishing threads. Hold the paper between the fingers of one hand and use the other hand to pull your bristles through it. Squeeze the abrasive only enough to make contact with the bristles. If you grab the bristles with the paper, you’ll likely bend them.
Sanding won’t remove large blobs of solder, but can nick off some small ones. It also polishes things smooth.
If your process goes like mine, you’ll have some ugly ones, some beautiful ones, and a whole bunch somewhere in between. If you find ones with large solder blobs, or large bridges of solder suspended between wire ends that spread far apart, you can always redo them by drawing again through the solder puddle.
Thanks
Big thanks to Sarah Guerin, who not only made the Instagram post showing all her supplies, but also answered an e-mail from me with the tip on dragging through the puddle.
Thanks also to Jeff Mandel for the tip on clipping twice to make points, rather than blunt tips.