Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 23:24:11 -0600
Subject: PUPT: Piano wire/ rods


	Adding to Fred's method of bending heavier guage piano wire into
tight little loops for use as control rods. Bend a right angle into your
wire about 1/4" from the end in your standard beat-to-crap table vise. Then
clamp that little L into the jaws of a vise-grip and put the vise-grip into
the aforementioned, hard-working, beat-to-crap  table vise. Then with lots
of grunting and pulling and swearing, you can usually manage to pull the
wire around a good part of the loop. Finally squeeze the loop closed in the
vise grips (or a big pair of channel lock pliers) accompanied by more
grunting, to squish the loop closed. Afterwards, you can fill in what gap
remains with epoxy gel. With practice, you can make a nice tight little
loop, with out too much damage to your ribcage. This method works for steel
rods up the 5/32". if you have a strong enough table-vise, attached to a
heavy enough table, and if your willing to do some serious grunting.

	But I don't think heating  hardened springsteel redhot with a torch
is good because the heat cause the steel to lose its temper and become
brittle. It's okay to use that method for non-hardened steels though. It
sure makes bending it a lot easier!

	Of course, for lighter puppet rods, you can also use umbrella
spokes (the round-spoked ones, not the cheap ones that flat metal strips
bent in a u for spokes, and NEVER those stupid, collapsable "Tote" types).
It's not spring steel, but they have nice convenient holes pre-drilled in
each end (try doing that at home!) And hey, one $10 umbrella gives you 8
long and eight short spokes, plus about 2' of metal tube,  heavy springs,
and some other bonus hardware. And hey, you don't even have to shell out
the $10! After a heavy rainstorm, you can pick em off the street for free
by the armful.

Okay, that's my techno-tip for the week. Goodnight all.

Stephen




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