How Needles Are/Were Made

Needle making begins with a fine, even-tempered steel wire that originally comes in coils. A machine cuts off blanks the length of two needles. These blanks are straightened, then emery wheels shape points on both ends. Another machine flattens the blanks in the middle (stamping) and punches the eyes. More machines are used to cut apart, harden, temper, sort, polish, and package.

As you can imagine, prior to the invention of these needle making machines, the process was very labor intensive. Just grinding the points produced a phenomenal amount of dust and steel particles and many early needle workers died of “Pointer’s Disease” from inhaling the debris. The stamping and eyeing machine wasn’t invented until 1850. The introduction of gas-fired furnaces around that time, improved the hardening and tempering steps of production and quenching in oil instead of water eliminated the problem with rusting. I know you’ve seen such sayings as “hardened in oil” or “boiled in oil” on needle packages. Needles were still sorted by keen eyed inspectors and packaged by hand until the early 1900’s.

The Redditch (I’m sure you’ve seen that name on some of your needle packs) area of England is synonymous with needle making. At the turn of the century there were literally hundreds of small needle companies in the area. Over time, all of these small companies merged and now there exists only one large company in Redditch – Henry Milward and Sons.

Some of this information comes from my trusty 1925 “American Reference Library” encyclopedia. The rest comes from a lovely book called “The Personal Reminiscences of a Needlemaker”, by Bernard T. Lee.

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