Material: A piece No. 20 gauge, 11⁄2 × 1⁄2 ins., is enough to make the head of a hat pin. The pin part must be of steel, copper is too soft. Buy any cheap hat pin in a dry goods store. (A cent apiece.) Break the glass top or black top and use the pin for the copper head.
Tools: One chasing tool, half moon; shears, dividers, planishing hammer.
Designs for hat pin heads
Design: Hat pin with hexagonal top (6 sides) 11⁄2 ins. across. With your dividers draw a circle on the piece of copper, having a diameter of 11⁄2 in. With the radius of the circle, mark off the circumference into 6 equal parts. Draw lead-pencil lines from one point to another, just touching the circle at these points. With your shears cut along these straight lines. Now you have a 6-sided piece of copper 11⁄2 ins. across. Place this piece of copper on the flat end of the hard wood block (the grain end of the wood), and make impressions on it with the half moon tool like your designs. This tool you can make yourself. Take a piece of steel, 5⁄16 in. square or round, heat one end to a red heat and flatten it, like the flat end of a chisel. File the end just flattened blunt and rounding. This end should be hardened to prevent it from wearing rough. To do this heat it to a dark red heat and plunge it into cold water. Place your tool on the upper sides of this plate and drive it with a hammer into the copper, being careful not to drive it through into the wood. If you drive the tool through you will spoil the design and have rough edges. This makes a simple raised or embossed design and is quite easily done.
Hat pin. Driving the design
When this pattern has been stamped in, curve the piece of copper any shape you wish by placing it in the depression in the hard wood block. Place the embossed side down, and with the round end of the planishing hammer, drive with light blows so as not to flatten the design. In this way, you can shape it as you wish. The top could now be soldered right on to the pin itself, but that would not make a strong hat pin. It would be weak and too easily broken from the head. In order to have a strong hat pin we make a little mushroom shaped pin holder which is fastened on the under part of the head of the hat pin and in which the pin itself fits.