Hat Pin With a Hat-Coil and a Hair-Coil, Screwed In and Out (Condra, 1906)

"The insertion of the pin is accomplished with the least possible manipulation, as the hat-coil 4 is first passed through one side of the hat, then through the hair, and then through the other side of the hat."

Cut 1.6 mm steel wire to the length from the notebook. Draw it through a fold of cloth between your fingers, or roll it under a flat board, until it is straight.

Hold the wire in the vice and file one end to a long, even point, turning it as you go. Finish on a sharpening stone so it slips through felt and straw without tearing them.

About 6 mm from the point, wind the wire two turns round a 3 mm rod, spacing them about 3 mm apart, like a small corkscrew. Bend the wire on each side back so the point and the rest of the pin run straight along the coil's middle: her "axis in line with the rod".

At the place the notebook gives, wind five turns the same way round the same rod, in the same direction as the hat-coil, so one turn of the pin drives both. Bend the ends back in line again. Sight along the pin: the straight parts should all lie on one line.

Cut the end square at the finished length and roughen it with sandpaper. Fill the hole of a glass bead with epoxy and push it on, her head or knob 3. It turns the pin and stops it going too far. Leave it to set as the epoxy's label says.

Turn the hat-coil through one side of the hat. Push the pin straight across, without turning, until the hat-coil reaches the far side. Then turn it again: one coil goes through the hat and the other into the hair, and the head comes against the hat. To take it out, turn it back the other way and draw it out.

**Elizabeth S. Condra** of Corona, California, US 814,833, dated 13 March 1906, filed 22 August 1904. She claimed "a hat-pin comprising a metal rod having one end sharpened to form a tip or point, a head at the other end, the rod being provided with a hat-coil and a hair-coil". She wrote that it will be impossible for it to work itself out of the hat "as so frequently happens with a straight pin". She gives no sizes: the steel wire, the 230 mm length, the coil size and number of turns, the glass bead and the epoxy are ours.